APEC Marks 20th Birthday but No Free Trade Yet

It's been called A Place to Enjoy Coffee, and the less charitable Aging Politicians Enjoying Cocktails.

Pedestrians walk under a giant APEC banner outside the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore on...

Pedestrians walk under a giant APEC banner outside the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore on Monday, Nov. 9, 2009. President Barack Obama and other Asia-Pacific leaders, meeting at a summit this week, will push for a new global strategy to reduce the crippling imbalances in the world economy blamed for the severe financial crisis. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

(AP)

Derisive definitions of APEC, or Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, spring from its reputation as simply a chance for 21 leaders, including the U.S. president, to meet every year and make lofty but nonbinding promises to boost trade and investment within the region.

Familiar questions of APEC's relevance promise to crop up at the forum's annual summit Nov. 14-15, a meeting weighed down by economic crisis and the unfulfilled goal of free trade and investment among the group's developed members by 2010.

Unfazed, some APEC members are now talking about turning the group, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, into the world's largest free-trade area — one that is home to about 40 percent of the world's population across four continents and generates about half of global trade.

Plus, a new study indicates that APEC might actually be more effective at promoting trade than previously thought.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of host Singapore said the organization should try to find "possible pathways toward the long-term vision" of a free-trade area in the Asia-Pacific.

"It will be a bumpy ride," he wrote in an invitation letter to other leaders. "We need to explore new growth paradigms and take our efforts to integrate the region to the next level.

APEC was never meant to be a round table for trade negotiations. It was merely a way to bring together leaders of industrialized and developing countries with a common commitment to free trade despite their differences.

The highly diverse APEC region ranges from the impoverished Papua New Guinea to the United States, the world's biggest economy at $13.8 trillion.

Still, there is evidence the forum may be instrumental in promoting free trade, despite its nonbinding nature, by giving leaders and senior officials a chance to meet and mingle.