The US-proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) won’t be able to promote effective trade and economic cooperation if it excludes key regional players, like Russia and China, Russian president said ahead of his visit to Beijing for the 25th APEC summit.
“Obviously, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is just another US attempt to build an architecture of regional economic cooperation that the US would benefit from,” Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Chinese media, RT reported.
“At the same time, I believe that the absence of two major regional players such as Russia and China in its composition will not promote the establishment of effective trade and economic cooperation.”
The TPP is a proposed regional free-trade agreement, which is being negotiated by some countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which include the US, Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
It was planned that the talks to launch the Partnership would be completed between 2005 and 2012, but complex issues like agriculture, intellectual property, investments and others saw the discussion continue until now.
Yet, Putin stressed, it is not easy to evaluate the progress, which has been achieved in the talks on Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Many experts view the TPP as Washington’s attempt to counter APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) amid growing influence of Russia and China in the region.
Launched back in1989, the APEC is a forum of 21 Pacific Rim states aimed at promoting free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
The Russian president acknowledged that organization of different regional free trade agreements is currently “one of the global trends.”
However, he stressed that the free trade agreements “shouldn’t fragment the multilateral trading system, but rather complement it, contribute to its consolidation and growth of interconnectedness.”
“The regional unions should not be turned against each other or otherwise divided. Such agreements should be transparent, fair and address the needs of each economy. Regional integration should be transparent and promote information-sharing between all the negotiations processes,” he explained.
The annual 25th APEC summit will take place in the Chinese capital, Beijing, on November 10-11, with the likes of Chinese President Xi Jinping, US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe among the attendees.
