Asia-Pacific nations have made a breakthrough in promoting trade in
'green' technology, and the United States is pressing ahead with efforts to
carve out a regional free-trade zone, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
Speaking before a summit of
leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Deputy U.S.
Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis said the group had agreed to slash
import duties on technologies that can promote economic growth without
endangering the environment.
"This is really a
significant achievement, in that it shows how APEC can lead," Marantis
told Reuters in an interview after ministers finished their preparations for
the summit on Saturday and Sunday in the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok.
"It allows us to accomplish
the twin goals of liberalising trade and green growth."
Ministers agreed on a list of 54
green technologies that will be subject to import duties of 5 percent or less
from 2015, following through on a commitment made by leaders at the last APEC
summit in Honolulu a year ago.
According to summit documents
seen by Reuters, the list includes equipment used in generating power from
renewable energy sources such as the sun, wind and biomass; treating waste
water; recycling and environmental monitoring.
Officials have described the
clean technology initiative as a main summit "deliverable" for APEC,
a consensus-based group that focuses on economic issues and links rising
nations led by China with advanced economies such as the United States.
APEC accounts for 40 percent of
the world's population, 54 percent of economic output and 44 percent of trade.
Exports within the group are forecast by consultancy firm PwC to nearly treble
over the next decade to $14.6 trillion while exports to non-APEC countries will
double to $5.6 trillion, making the Pacific Rim the focus of global growth in
the years to come.
APEC will next year tackle
so-called local content requirements, which are in effect import restrictions
that in the view of the United States distort trade.
Moving ahead
The diverse nature of the
Pacific-Rim economies, which unlike crisis-hit Europe are showing relatively
strong growth, has led some APEC countries to join Washington in pushing for a
new free-trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Marantis said trade ministers
from nine nations participating in the TPP talks had met in Vladivostok and
affirmed their determination to move ahead at negotiations to be hosted next
week by the United States in Leesburg, Virginia.
The Leesburg talks will be the
14th round in a TPP process that was initiated by APEC leaders at a summit two
years ago. Negotiators will seek to iron out further details of a 29-chapter
multilateral free trade deal.
The TPP groups the United States,
Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Peru,
while Canada and Mexico are due to be formally admitted to the discussions in
October.
Marantis said the group was
"working together to create a high-standard, 21st-century trade agreement
that addresses a lot of problems that exporters are facing in a way that will
grow jobs and create new opportunities for exporters."
There are no deadlines for
finalising the TPP deal, but Marantis said negotiators were seeking to complete
the bulk of their work next year.
"Substance will drive timing
- that's what's really important," Marantis said. "If you look at how
much progress we've been able to make in such a short amount of time we're
working to wrap up as much as possible over the course of 2013."
The TPP ties in with President
Barack Obama's goal of doubling U.S. exports within five years of his election
in 2008, and has been described as the biggest free trade pact since the 1994
North American Free Trade Agreement.
China, the world's second-largest
economy, is not a party to the process while APEC summit host Russia - which
has only just joined the World Trade Organisation - says it is not ready to
look at joining the TPP.
The Citizens Trade Campaign, a
U.S. umbrella group, has criticised the TPP process as overly secretive and has
called demonstrations against the Leesburg talks, fearing that a free trade
deal could result in the loss of American jobs.
Reuters
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