APEC moves forward on expanding free trade in Asian Pacific Region

President Obama, as part of his visit to Asia earlier this week, participated in the two day Asia-Pacific Economy Cooperative summit in Japan this weekend which focused on an effort to call for more ‘liberalized free trade’ in the Asian Pacific Region.

Some leaders in the region however, are not buying this. Apparently, President Obama was unable to come to an agreement with South Korea, which the United States anticipated on completing during the summit, known as the U.S.-South Korea trade deal. This has left many questions and concerns with other countries based in the region. The trade deal with South Korea was to become a catalyst for a more open and less restrictive regional trade deal called The Transpacific Partnership in the Asian Pacific Region.

Despite the fact that the United States’ trade deficit has diminished in the last few years, now to the tune of about $400 billion for fiscal year 2010, Obama seems to show a great deal of heavy dependency on establishing these trade agreements as he views Asia being one of the greatest priorities for solving diplomacy and importing jobs back into the United States. Again, it comes back to the notion of not only China, but now other countries based in the Asian Pacific Region, as to whether the United States can remain committed to such free trade proposals, while trying to stabilize our monetary supply and inflation

There is no question that the United States has, and will continue to feel the heat from China, since their currency is devalued, they can export production for far less, than what it would cost the United States to do the same job. This same week, President Obama at the G-20 summit failed to try to get garner support to influence China to undervalue their currency to the U.S. dollar, and believe that it was free trade. They can say it is free trade, while the United States continues to get murdered by such exports, but when it comes to correcting the imbalances, well, then that is not called free trade.

At the height of forging ahead with free trade throughout the Asian Pacific Region is one thing, but to basically continue to criticize China’s currency in relation to free trade, for the idiocy of our own monetary policies, is absurdly irresponsible.