APEC officials agree to free trade area of the Asia Pacific ‘study’

APEC officials agree to free trade area of the Asia Pacific ‘study’

BEIJING—Senior negotiators at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum agreed to a two-year study into the possibility of creating a Pacific-wide free-trade zone, APEC’s executive director said.

“It’s not an opening of negotiations,” on what is known as the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, said Alan Bollard, the APEC executive director in a press briefing. “It’s a strategic study of what an FTAAP could mean in detail.”

China, APEC’s host this year, had been pushing for more concrete action on the proposed free-trade zone. Specifically it wanted what is called a feasibility study—trade lingo for the start of negotiations—and a target date of 2025 to finish a deal, according to trade officials. But the U.S. was able to block those initiatives, the trade officials said, because it worried that momentum toward creating an FTAAP could impede progress on completing its own regional trade deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Starting on Tuesday, senior negotiators from the 21 APEC economies have been discussing details of the FTAAP and other issues, including an anticorruption initiative. Trade negotiators are due to come into Beijing on Friday, followed by leaders of the nations on Monday. They are expected to ratify the results of the senior negotiator discussions.

Mr. Bollard said the study “would investigate the possibility” of an FTAAP, including “what it might involve, how we might get there and how long it will take.”