Did the APEC Summit succeed in addressing the most important economic and business issues? How important to Singapore and the region was it to have th

The Summit achieved tremendous momentum in setting the tone for trade liberation and cooperation among members. US’s participation in such dialogue draws the importance of Asean and the Asia Pacific countries in relations to US’s trade policies. During George Bush’s presidency, he met with Asean leaders 3 times – in October 2002 in Los Cabos, Mexico, in December 2005 in Busan, Korea and finally in September 2007 in Sydney. These meetings involved only 7 members of Asean as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were not part of APEC. This time, President Obama engaged with all 10 Asean members signifying Washington’s aim to bolster trade and investment links with the region as a mean to strengthen the US economy and to balance relationship with counterweights with China and India.

The acceleration of regional integration to create larger markets is one of the best ways to stimulate growth. The formation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade area to pursue the streamlining of customs procedures and financial policies among the region’s economies is one such way to forge ahead with real, substantive development in a free trade area. The group of 4 – Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand and Chile will set the snowball effect of aggregating more members to participate in the opening up a trade in a larger trading area. Washington is pursuing bilateral investment treaties with countries in the region and its indications to throw its support behind the Apec’s "single window" and TPP is symbolic in this Summit.

Coupled with greater Asean integration, TPP can be the foundation of a broad Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific and Singapore can be the bridge to link this up and plays the pivotal role as a trade channel developer and important gateway to Asean and TPP.