Trade Chiefs Jostle for Time With Greer at APEC Meeting in Korea

Jamieson Greer Photographer: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images Photo by Kayla Bartkowski /Getty Images

Article content

(Bloomberg) — Trade chiefs from some of the world’s biggest economies will compete for access to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer as they seek to advance negotiations with Washington when they gather this week for a conference in South Korea. 

Article content

Article content

Greer travels to the resort island of Jeju to join his counterparts at the meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Partnership members on May 15 and 16, less than a week after he helped the US and China agree on a temporary cut in tariffs. 

Article content

Article content

Representatives from member states will likely swap views on how to operate in a global trade environment shaken up by President Donald Trump’s barrage of tariffs. Many of them will also seek talks with Greer to try to blunt the impact of Trump’s trade policies with those bilateral meetings contrasting with APEC’s longstanding objectives of furthering free trade through multilateral cooperation.

Article content

Article content

“For many trade ministers, securing a one-on-one meeting with USTR Greer will be their main goal,” said David Boling, Director of Japan Trade at the Eurasia Group and a former trade negotiator at the Office of the US Trade Representative. “They want a meeting with Greer, even if it is brief, to discuss the tariffs affecting their own economy. He will be the busiest trade minister there, and his schedule will be jampacked.”

Article content

The US and China are the biggest economies among the group’s 21 members, which APEC says account for around half of global trade and about 60% of global gross domestic product. In the past APEC summit meetings have sometimes provided a venue for US presidents and their Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to meet and exchange views. The APEC summit meeting comes in the autumn.

Article content

Article content

During this week’s event, Greer may get another opportunity to meet Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang, who negotiated with him in Geneva. Li will attend the APEC meeting, according to a South Korean government official, who asked not to be identified. 

Article content

Among other members, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Vietnam are all caught in Trump’s cross hairs over trade. 

Article content

“It is meaningful for the ministers to gather together for the first time since the Trump administration slapped massive tariffs around the world and discuss a way forward for the global trading system,” said Yeo Han-koo, a former South Korean trade minister who is now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He described this week’s meeting as a building block for the APEC summit in November.

Article content

South Korea hosts APEC this year with a central theme of “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow” and aims to make progress in realizing the Putrajaya Vision 2040 for which leaders including Trump in 2020 agreed “to work together to deliver, a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent and predictable trade and investment environment.”