Putin: Integration Important, TPP Secrecy the Wrong Way
President Vladimir Putin, preceding his trip to Manila for the APEC meeting, wrote a column for Rossiyskaya Gazeta promoting economic integration, but denouncing the closed-door, exclusive, secret method used to negotiate the TPP.
“Trade can’t remain the sole driving force behind economic growth in the Asia-Pacific,” he wrote, “as the region now requires additional agreements covering services, investment, non-tariff barriers, competition policy, and subsidies that can only be reached through mutual consensus.”
Putin pointed to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan as the example of “responsible and transparent partnership,” working openly with other countries and with China’s Silk Road Economic Belt initiative, to “give a big boost to effective integration of the Asia-Pacific economies.”
“We believe that the strategic road ahead lies not only in increasing the number of free trade zones, but also in joint development and implementation of the best liberalization practices among all APEC members,” Putin wrote. APEC should “maintain its key role in developing in the [asia-pacific] region a common and open market, free of discrimination and bloc-based barriers.”
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