ABSTRACT
Many formal border barriers to trade in the Asia Pacific have already been reduced to negligible levels. Political pressures sustain high protection of a few sensitive sectors, especially parts of agriculture, but there is no intention to revert to a development strategy based on protectionism. On the contrary, there is a growing desire for closer economic cooperation with distant as well as neighbouring economies. Governments of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies continue to reaffirm their support for a rules-based global economic order, built around the norms of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as well as for the goal of achieving free and open trade and investment by the 2010/2020 Bogor deadlines agreed in 1994.
