The top White House economic adviser on Sunday acknowledged the pain for Americans of sharply rising consumer prices, saying that President Joe Biden remains open to the possibility of tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease spiraling gasoline prices that motorists are paying at service stations.

“There’s no doubt inflation is high right now,” Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show. “It’s affecting Americans’ pocketbooks. It’s affecting their outlook.”

U.S. consumer prices jumped at an annualized rate of 6.2% in October, the biggest increase since 1990, the government’s Labor Department reported last week.

Higher energy and food prices have affected consumers the most, with consumer spending accounting for 70% of the U.S. economy, the world’s biggest.

Fuel costs for motorists are up sharply over the last year, with motorists now paying $3.30 a gallon (3.8 liters), $1.08 more than a year ago, the highest average price since 2014. The cost of grocery bills has risen 5.3% over the last year, with beef prices increasing markedly, further pinching household budgets.

Deese offered no immediate solution for the higher consumer prices, but said economic forecasters expect the inflation rate to decrease in 2022.

He said “all options are on the table” to curb rising prices, including tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, where the U.S. currently has 612 million barrels of oil stored in four salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico coast. 

Some release of the reserve oil could be refined into gasoline for sale to motorists, which could in the short term ease gas prices at service station pumps. But U.S. presidents have only reluctantly tapped the reserve, instead holding it for use in the event of a possible true national emergency, such as a cutoff in Middle East and north Atlantic oil production.

The existing oil reserve is enough to replace more than half a year’s worth of U.S. crude net imports.

Deese said three things have to occur to improve U.S. economic growth and curb inflation.

”One, we have to finish the job on COVID,” he said, with more vaccinations to curb the spread of the coronavirus that causes the illness. “We have to return to a sense of economic normalcy by getting more workplaces COVID-free; getting more kids vaccinated so more parents feel comfortable going to work.”

But Biden’s mandate that 84 million U.S. workers be vaccinated at workplaces with 100 or more employees has been at least temporarily blocked by a U.S. appellate court pending further court hearings.

Secondly, Deese said, “We’ve got to address the supply chain issue” of consumer goods arriving into the U.S. from Asia, with 83 container ships currently anchored off the Pacific Coast waiting for docking and unloading.

He said the $1.2 trillion infrastructure legislation Biden is signing Monday will help ease transportation bottlenecks in the U.S., but that construction work does not occur overnight.

Lastly, he called for congressional passage of Biden’s nearly $2 trillion social safety legislation to provide more financial, educational and health care assistance to all but the wealthiest American families. The House of Representatives is planning to vote on the measure this week, but its fate in the Senate remains uncertain.

Despite the immediate inflationary pressures on American consumers and Biden’s sharply declining voter approval standing, Deese said the economy has sharply improved since Biden took office last January.

“When the president took office, we were facing an all-out economic crisis,” Deese said. “Eighteen million people were collecting unemployment benefits. Three thousand people a day were dying of COVID. And because of the actions the president has taken, we’re now seeing an economic recovery that most people didn’t think was possible then.”

“Economic growth in America is outstripping any other developed country,” Deese said. “And the unemployment rate has come down to 4.6%; that’s about two years faster than experts projected.”

But with higher consumer prices, the Democratic president’s Republican political foes are focusing on American pocketbooks as congressional elections halfway through Biden’s four-year presidential term loom in November of next year.

One Republican critic, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, told ABC’s “This Week” show, he would never have believed Biden would preside over the biggest increase in consumer prices in three decades.

But Barrasso blamed what he characterized as Biden’s “almost irreversibly bad” federal government spending choices, both for infrastructure and the pending social safety legislation. 

The infrastructure legislation was approved with both Republican and Democratic support, but no Republicans have voiced support for the social safety net measure, forcing Democrats to attempt to pass it with their own votes.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the nature of homebuying in the United States, but one constant is that Black Americans do not have the same access to a home of their own.

Black purchasers made up just six percent of the total homebuyers this year — a figure that has changed little over the past two decades, a National Association of Realtors (NAR) report released Thursday said.

Pandemic dynamics have allowed many Americans to get caught up on student loans and build savings, since spending opportunities like travel and eating in restaurants were off limits.

As remote work became the norm, more buyers packed up and moved to be closer to family and friends rather than relocating for a job, according to NAR’s 2021 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

However Black Americans are weighed down by student loan debt to a greater degree than their white counterparts, and less able to get help from family, the report said.

“Unfortunately, race hasn’t really changed much this year. We’re still seeing pretty consistent, low shares of minority homebuyers,” NAR’s Jessica Lautz told AFP in an interview.

While low interest rates made mortgages more accessible, the now-chronic shortage of homes for sale has driven prices higher and kept many first-time buyers out of the market, the data showed.

Even in the South, Blacks made up just nine percent of homebuyers in a region where their population in some states is more than double the 13 percent national average, the report said.

Prior NAR research shows white homeownership rates are 30 percentage points higher than those of Black buyers, who are more than twice as likely to have student loan debt and a higher amount, and are rejected for mortgages at more than twice the rate as white applicants.

And because they are less likely to own homes, they are not able to use proceeds from the sale of a home to finance a purchase.

Priced out

While the share of first-time buyers rose this year, it remains below the historic norm of 40 percent, said Lautz, NAR’s vice president of demographics and behavioral insights.

“We know that first-time homebuyers are struggling to enter into this housing market,” she said, adding they find it hard “to pull the money together and then to be able to compete with other buyers” who increasingly can pay all cash.

With historically low inventory — exacerbated by a shortage of workers and supply issues and tendency for builders to focus on large, expensive houses — sellers are getting full asking price and more for their homes, and a higher share of buyers can pay cash.

The median home price was $305,000, more than $30,000 higher than in 2020, according to the report.

President Joe Biden has made lowering home prices a plank of his Build Back Better bill under consideration in Congress, calling for $150 billion for “the single largest and most comprehensive investment in affordable housing in history.”

His plan would offer down payment assistance to help more buyers own their first home and build wealth, and focus on zoning reform to allow more construction.

Close to family

One of the biggest shifts during the pandemic has been the increase in demand for work-from-home opportunities as offices shut down.

“Home sellers are saying their number-one reason to sell is to get closer to friends and family,” Lautz said. “People really wanted their support system around them and needed it during the pandemic.”

Job relocation as the reason to move fell to seven percent from 11 percent.

She said she expects that trend to continue “as CEOs understand if they want to retain talent, they may need to allow more flexibility in working from home.”

Another trend is the dwindling share of homebuyers with children, which fell to 31 percent — the lowest on record, she said.

That shifts priorities, since those buyers will be less concerned about issues like schools or larger homes, which for cash-strapped buyers will “open up neighborhoods for them that would have been off limits if they had children in the home.”
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Although Australia seems likely to back Taiwan’s, rather than China’s bid, to join a major pan-Pacific trade bloc, Canberra must focus solely on their qualifications rather than link its decision to other issues, analysts say.

China and Taiwan are both lobbying for Australia’s backing of their inclusion in the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the largest free-trade areas in the world, which was signed in 2018.

Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam currently make up the CPTPP.

China’s courting of Australia’s support comes despite Beijing’s blocking of agricultural goods that have cost Australian exporters billions of dollars. It also coincides with a period of severely strained relations because of the new AUKUS security pact among Australia, the United States and Britain, which has infuriated Beijing. 

Any temptation to bargain with China to lift punitive sanctions against Australian wine, barley and lobster exports in exchange for championing its entry into the CPTPP risks rewarding Beijing’s trade coercion, according to an expert.

“Outright favoring China over Taiwan may help regain some favor in Beijing in the short run, but at what cost? Australia will only lose in the long run by horse-trading support for China in return for some loosening of the trade blockages imposed by Beijing,” Hugh Piper, a former strategic policy adviser in Australia’s Foreign Affairs and Trade Department, told VOA. 

“It sends an awful message to Beijing that it can extract concessions from Australia simply by restraining trade,” Piper said. 

Publicly endorsing Taiwan’s campaign for admission to the CPTPP could also backfire, he said.

“Australia should be cautiously supportive of Taiwan’s bid, but certainly no more enthusiastic than for any other prospective member,” Piper said. 

“Australia would lose whatever moral and rhetorical high ground it retains in its ongoing trade dispute with China if it was seen to be using the CPTPP as a vehicle for political retaliation,” he said. 

Taiwan is a significant regional economy and would be seen as a welcome addition to the cross-Pacific bloc, especially by Australia, which does not have a bilateral free trade agreement with the island, he said.  

Despite the absence of a bilateral Australia-Taiwan trade agreement, Taiwan is already a strong market for Australian exports. Taiwan was Australia’s 12th largest trading partner in 2020, worth $11.9 billion, and it was Australia’s ninth largest merchandise export market in 2020, worth $7.3 billion, according to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Major exports were coal, iron ore, natural gas, aluminum and copper.

“There’s certainly no need for Australia to dial up the rhetoric on Taiwan’s bid, publicly anyway. Australia’s focus should be on working intensely behind the scenes to convince other current members to look favorably on Taiwan’s bid, provided they can demonstrate that they meet the entry requirements,” he said.

Jennifer Hsu, a foreign policy research fellow at the Lowy Institute think tank, said Canberra has already indicated cautious support for Taiwan’s application.

“Trade Minister Dan Tehan has intimated that the Australian government and its representatives are seeking bilateral support [from other CPTPP member states] for Taiwan’s application to join the CPTPP,” Hsu told VOA. 

“So I think there is shifting perspectives, at least from the Australian government’s side, to see Taiwan as one of critical importance to the region and also to advancing Australia’s exports interests.”

While expanded tariff-free trade with Taiwan would not offset the losses from Chinese trade sanctions, it would open access to Taiwan’s technology products and provide new markets for Australia’s barley, lobster and wine.

Such a move chimes with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s public plug to Australian exporters to diversify and lessen their reliance on Chinese markets, saying in a public address, “It is no secret that China has recently sought to target Australia’s economy.”  

Supporting Taiwan’s admission into the trading bloc “is one demonstration of this process and this thinking,” Hsu said.

The bloc imposes entry requirements that include a commitment to workers’ rights, freedom of association, and a ban on forced labor.

Few believe that China would sign up to those commitments.   

China’s bid is “likely to come unstuck at the point of substantive commitments to market reforms that CPTPP membership demands,” Piper said. 

“Given [China’s] ongoing prioritization of state control over market liberalization under [President] Xi Jinping, the kind of reform required for the sake of a trade agreement seems unlikely to be prioritized over the desire for control over the economy. 

“That leads to the implication that China’s bid is more about strategy than economics: a move to further stymie Taiwan’s international space and voice.”

China will need to pull back on any reprisal language or behavior aimed at Australia while it seeks to join the pact, Hsu said.

“The Chinese government will articulate stronger and angrier words against Australia’s support for Taiwan’s application, but the Chinese government has to balance that with what it seeks from joining the trading bloc,” she said.

“How much more can China say about Australia without harming its application to join the trading bloc? That’s the framework one has to think about: how far will China push its language and economic coercion before it backfires?” she said.
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President Joe Biden and his advisers appear to be nearing a decision on whether to reappoint Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell when his term ends in February.

But public outcry over persistently high inflation may have changed the terms of the discussion.

Biden is deciding as inflation climbs to levels not seen in three decades, with prices rising for various goods and services as well as necessities such as food and fuel. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that inflation in October jumped 6.2% from a year ago, a stunning leap after the Fed had spent nearly a decade unable to push inflation to 2%, its nominal target rate.

Last week, Powell and current Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard met individually with Biden in the White House, just days after Biden told reporters that he intends to make his plans for the Fed known “fairly quickly.”

With public approval of Biden’s job performance dropping, his party reeling from a gubernatorial election setback in Virginia in early November, and congressional Republicans hammering him for rising prices, Biden’s Fed appointment decision has taken on even greater weight.

Bank regulation on back burner

Since early this year, when speculation began over whether Biden would reappoint Powell, the clear alternative was for him to elevate Brainard to the job. But at the time, the focus of the debate appeared to be on their different approaches to banking regulation.

When people think of the Fed, they think mainly about its role in setting interest rates and controlling the money supply in the United States. However, the Fed also plays a major role in the regulation of some of the largest financial institutions in the country.

Powell, a Republican who was appointed to lead the Fed by former President Donald Trump, has taken what critics on the left view as an overly permissive stance when it comes to the regulation of large financial institutions.

Brainard, the only Democrat on the Fed board, is more aligned with left-leaning members of her party, such as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, in believing that stricter supervision is necessary to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis that crippled the U.S. economy between late 2007 and mid-2009.

Now, however, with inflation on the rise and the president and his party facing poor public approval ratings, tighter banking regulations may be a second-tier issue for Biden.

“If you want to look at the economy right now and have a ledger of things to worry about, the soundness and safety of the banking system is not at the top of that list,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate.com, told VOA. “Over the long term, it should be toward the top of the list, but for now, banks are performing quite well. We haven’t had a major banking failure for quite some time.”

Inflation the key issue

People who pay attention to the Federal Reserve often categorize members of the board, and of the larger Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates, as being either “hawkish” or “dovish.”

The hawks are policymakers who are sensitive to rising inflation and quick to raise interest rates to prevent inflation from getting out of control, even if it cools the economy to the point where not everyone seeking a job can find one.

Doves, by contrast, prioritize high rates of employment over low inflation, and they will vote to maintain low interest rates until the economy reaches what they consider “full employment.” This is not to say that doves will tolerate any level of inflation, but only that they do not mind if inflation slightly exceeds the Fed’s stated 2% target rate while jobs are still being created.

By any measure, both Powell and Brainard fall into the dovish category. As the U.S. economy has been recovering from the pandemic-induced recession last year, both have supported policies that have kept interest rates at near zero and have pumped huge amounts of money into the system, even as inflation began to rise.

Both have said that they believe the current wave of inflation is a transitory effect of the global economy trying to turn itself back on after the pandemic lockdowns. That stands in sharp contrast to many, such as former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who have been warning for months that inflation could surge out of control.

Powell, however, is largely seen as less of a dove than Brainard, and with Biden feeling the political pinch, that might tilt the balance in favor of Powell.

Relationship with Congress

Another factor in Powell’s favor is that at a time when the president’s relationship with Republicans in Congress is strained, the current chairman has a rapport with members from both sides of the aisle.

“Within Congress, Powell has built up a great amount of credibility with both sides, both Republicans and Democrats,” said Christopher Russo, a postgraduate research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

“In the pandemic, the Fed adopted a flexible average inflation target, meaning that they are going to run inflation above target after periods where it ran below target, and Powell has done a lot of work to explain the importance of that policy to skeptics in Congress,” Russo told VOA.

He added: “So, when we get to the current point in time, where inflation is running much higher than the inflation target, I think Powell’s credibility here would be an actual asset.”

Powell favored

Most experts have always considered Powell’s reappointment as chairman to be more likely than his replacement, especially as the job of vice chair for banking supervision is opening up, and placing Brainard there might partly placate the Warren wing of the president’s party.

Since the inflation numbers were announced on Wednesday, the odds of a Powell reappointment rose from 71% to 76% as of Friday afternoon on the political betting website PredictIt.

“I think that the politics of this become more complicated by burgeoning and more persistent inflation,” said Hamrick, of Bankrate.com. “And so what might have been seen as more of a competition six to 12 months ago has become less so.”
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Agricultural commodities such as coffee, cotton and wheat faced sharp price swings this year as output was hit by extreme weather sparked partly by climate change. 

According to analysts, volatile weather conditions and temperatures have adversely impacted crop growth, harvest and supply in key exporters. 

“The weather has certainly created tightness in the (agricultural) markets,” Sucden analyst Geordie Wilkes told AFP. 

That has stoked prices of soft commodities at a time when global inflation is already soaring due to the post-pandemic demand recovery and supply-chain snarl-ups. 

Climate change is under the spotlight as global powers at the two-week COP26 summit in Glasgow attempt to reach agreement to slow the pace of global warming. 

Droughts and frost 

Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee producer and a major player in corn, was gripped in April by a severe drought, which sent prices briefly spiking on supply woes. 

Just three months later in July, the South American giant suffered harsh frosts that pushed coffee prices to multi-year peaks. 

Arabica coffee topped $2 a pound — the highest since 2014 — and still remains close to this level. 

Elsewhere, southwestern Canada and the northern plains in the United States faced a prolonged springtime drought that damaged wheat production. 

Wheat prices were ignited and still remain close to historic highs, with soft wheat trading at $300 per tonne on Euronext. 

Greater extremes 

Experts forecast the frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, wildfires, floods and typhoons will simply accelerate. 

“The frequency of extreme weather events seen over (recent) years leads us to believe that these events will likely happen more often in the future and therefore agricultural commodity prices will remain elevated,” Rabobank analyst Carlos Mera told AFP. 

Wilkes agreed that the outlook was gloomy for soft commodity growers as weather patterns become “more volatile, more extreme.” 

Climate change, coupled with Amazon deforestation, was “changing weather patterns and increasing” the frequency of such extreme weather events, he noted. 

Volatility can also occur when investors find it difficult to anticipate prevailing weather conditions in key production areas. 

Market swings are likewise amplified by the uneven distribution of crops around the world — and the dependency on one country for certain crops, as is the case with arabica coffee in Brazil. 

Arabica, for example, is prone to volatility “because this is mainly grown on the highlands, where weather can fluctuate more strongly and crop losses can be more severe,” said Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch. 

Brazil is also impacted by the El Nino phenomenon, a warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern Pacific that occurs every two to seven years and causes droughts in some areas and flooding in others. 

Domino effect 

Added to the picture, some agricultural commodities face a “domino effect” of indirect consequences due to harsh weather conditions elsewhere. 

For example, hurricanes in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico caused major damage to oil facilities in the summer, sparking a drop in crude supply and a rebound in oil prices. 

That prompted higher sugar prices because the commodity is used in the production of ethanol — a cheaper version of gasoline, or petrol. 

The cotton market meanwhile bounced because higher oil prices make it more expensive to produce synthetic fibers. 

Cotton prices currently stand at their highest levels for more than a decade. 

 
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Americans quit their jobs at a record pace for the second straight month in September, in many cases for more money elsewhere as companies bump up pay to fill job openings that are close to an all-time high. 

The Labor Department said Friday that 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September, or about 3% of the nation’s workforce. That’s up from 4.3 million in August and far above the pre-pandemic level of 3.6 million. There were 10.4 million job openings, down from 10.6 million in August, which was revised higher. 

The figures point to a historic level of turmoil in the job market as newly empowered workers quit jobs, often for higher pay or better working conditions. Incomes are rising, Americans are spending more, and the economy is growing; employers have ramped up hiring to keep pace. Rising inflation, however, is offsetting much of the pay gains for workers. 

Friday’s report follows last week’s jobs report, which showed that employers stepped up their hiring in October, adding 531,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, from 4.8%. Hiring rebounded as the delta wave, which had restrained job gains in August and September, faded. 

It is typically perceived as a signal of worker confidence when people leave the jobs they hold. Most people quit for new positions. 

The number of available jobs has topped 10 million for four consecutive months. The record before the pandemic was 7.5 million. There were more job openings in September than the 7.7 million unemployed, illustrating the difficulties so many companies have had finding workers. 

In addition to the number of unemployed, there are about 5 million fewer people looking for jobs compared with pre-pandemic trends, making it much harder for employers to hire. Economists cite many reasons for that decline: Some are mothers unable to find or afford child care, while others are avoiding taking jobs out of fear of contracting COVID-19. Stimulus checks this year and in 2020, as well as extra unemployment aid that has since expired, have given some families more savings and enabled them to hold off from looking for work. 

Quitting has risen particularly sharply in industries that are mostly made up of in-person service jobs, such as restaurants, hotels, retail and in factories where people work in close proximity. That suggests that at least some people are quitting out of fear of COVID-19 and may be leaving the workforce. 

Goldman Sachs, in a research note Thursday, estimated that most of the 5 million were older Americans who decided to retire. Only about 1.7 million were aged 25 through 54, which economists consider prime working years. 

Goldman estimated that most of those people in their prime working years would return to work in the coming months, but that would still leave a much smaller workforce than before the pandemic. That could leave employers facing labor shortages for months or even years. 

Businesses in other countries are facing similar challenges, leading to pay gains and higher inflation in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom. 

Competition for U.S. workers is intense for retailers and delivery companies, particularly as they staff up for what is expected to be a healthy winter holiday shopping season. 

Online giant Amazon is hiring 125,000 permanent drivers and warehouse workers and is offering pay between $18 and $22 an hour. It’s also paying sign-on bonuses of up to $3,000. 

Seasonal hiring is also ramping up. Package delivery company UPS is seeking to add 100,000 workers to help with the crush of holiday orders and plans to make job offers to some applicants within 30 minutes.
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U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member economies concluded their virtual APEC Leaders’ Meeting on Friday, agreeing on a series of commitments regarding the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery and climate change mitigation.

Following the meeting chaired by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, leaders adopted a declaration under the theme of “Join, Work, Grow. Together,” which highlights policy actions to respond to COVID-19.

According to organizers, the declaration “lays out commitments in accelerating economic recovery and achieving sustainable and inclusive growth, including further actions in tackling climate change, empowering groups with untapped economic potential, supporting the region’s micro, small and medium enterprises and addressing the digital divide.”

The 21 APEC member economies account for nearly 3 billion people and about 60 percent of global GDP, spanning the Pacific Rim from Chile to Russia to Thailand to Australia.

Officials said they made significant progress during some 340 preliminary meetings. APEC members had agreed to reduce or eliminate many tariffs and border holdups on vaccines, masks and other medical products important to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The APEC meeting came on the heels of an unexpected U.S.-China declaration made Wednesday at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where the world’s two biggest CO2 emitters said they would work together to achieve the goal set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement of limiting warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) by the end of the century.

While the declaration was thin on details, Washington and Beijing pledged to cooperate on cutting emissions and to create a joint working group that will meet regularly to address the climate crisis over the next decade. Analysts called these small positive signs ahead of the Biden-Xi virtual summit scheduled for Monday.

The Glasgow statement moves the two countries significantly back toward a cooperative relationship in the many areas where Biden and Xi have complementary or similar interests, said Charles Morrison, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, a research group established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations among the peoples of Asia, the Pacific and the United States.

“What I would like to see is a collaborative examination of where they have common ground and next an implementation strategy,” Morrison added.

According to the White House, during his address at the virtual meeting, Biden “underscored his commitment to strengthening our relationship with APEC economies in order to advance fair and open trade and investment, bolster American competitiveness, and ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.” 

Xi’s pledge

Xi made a similar pledge in his address, saying China would “unswervingly” expand its opening up to the outside world and share China’s development opportunities with the world and Asia-Pacific countries, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Jennifer Bouey, Tang chair for China policy studies at the RAND Corporation, an American global policy research group, noted, however, that Beijing recently passed two new privacy and security laws that limit data sharing under the pretext of national security and the public interest.

“They also become a barrier for China’s collaboration not only with the U.S. but with the world at large,” Bouey said.

Issues remain

APEC members failed to reach a consensus on a U.S. proposal to host APEC gatherings in 2023. Russia rejected the bid because of a U.S. blacklist of its diplomats set in April, when Washington sanctioned the Kremlin for interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and hacking federal agency systems.

“The Russians simply did not want to accept the United States’ ability to make persona non grata for the Russian so-called diplomats who are no longer welcome in the United States, and the United States was not going to negotiate over security issue,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, a Washington research group.

There are no other bidders to host the 2023 meetings, though APEC works on a consensus basis so all members must agree.

“One economy is still undergoing consultations and has not yet joined consensus,” a White House official told VOA. “We hope this impasse is resolved quickly to ensure we can continue the positive momentum on economic cooperation through APEC.”

Meanwhile, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen used the APEC meetings to rally support for her bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that Beijing also is seeking to be a part of. Beijing considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province and has vowed to block Taipei’s bid.

Lengthy process

CPTPP members likely will negotiate with Beijing and settle on the issue of Chinese membership first before Taiwan’s bid — a process likely to take years.

“It needs approval from, among others, Japan, Canada and Australia, none of which are inclined to roll out the red carpet for China right now,” said Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, a global policy group in Washington.

Daly said there’s a chance, however, that more countries gradually will come to accommodate China.

“We know that China is patient, that they are gradualist, and that they will work with the other parties, one by one,” he said. “And China goes into this still as the leading trading nation in the world, and the lodestone of Asian economics.”

The Biden administration has not indicated interest in joining CPTPP, the 11-nation trade pact formed in 2018 after former President Donald Trump in 2017 pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama to deepen U.S. economic engagement in the Asia-Pacific region and counter China’s growing influence there.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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