President Bush, shown with Peruvian President Alan Garcia (left) at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru, believes that the global economic crisis may be overcome well ahead of the 18-month time frame adopted by summit participants.

Washington — President Bush believes that the world economy may rebound well ahead of the 18-month timetable set at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that took place in Lima, Peru, November 22-23.

According to Dan Price, a White House official who was in Lima with Bush, the president sees actions taken by the U.S. government and other governments as likely to produce results quickly.

The communiqué of the APEC summit, representing 21 economies in Asia and North and South America, reflects the conclusions by the leaders of the Group of 20 (G20), who met in Washington November 15. The APEC group also pledged not to erect new protectionist barriers in the next 12 months and to work toward reviving the Doha round of World Trade Organization negotiations aimed at opening markets. The APEC time frame for ending the financial crisis mirrors a prediction by the International Monetary Fund that the economies in the developed world will grow by a minuscule 0.9 percent in 2009 before reviving to a more robust growth-level in 2010.

Combining the APEC commitments with those of the G20 countries, Price said, puts the world in good position to reignite growth and overcome the current crisis. “We've seen that, in this global economic crisis, we're all inter-connected and inter-related,” he said.

Price said that Bush wants to avoid the mistakes that were made following the 1929 stock market crash.

“He did a lot of studying and reading up over the years in regards to what happened in 1929, when we in our country raised taxes, and then we passed the Smoot-Hawley Act, which was anti-trade. What followed was a very rough decade of the Great Depression,” Price said.

TRADE AMONG APEC MEMBERS

The APEC summit in Lima was the eighth that Bush has attended. During his eight years in office, the trade relations among the economies bordering the Pacific Ocean have broadened and deepened, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

When Bush took office, the United States had three free trade agreements in force with partners in Latin America and Asia. That number has grown to 14, with three agreements waiting to take effect and three more — with Panama, Colombia and South Korea — completed but not approved by Congress.

Rice said that the trade agreements with APEC countries “are the most advanced,” in terms of economics, labor rights and environmental protection. “They are the kind of models of free trade agreements going forward,” she said.

In the secretary's view, a huge success of the U.S. engagement with the Asia-Pacific region is improved relations with China.

“The United States has better relations with China than ever, across the board, and it's not easy to manage a very complicated relationship with a country that is emerging in the way that China is,” she said.

While the Bush administration addresses differences with China in human rights and economic matters, “the president has kept at front and center the importance of the United States remaining open to the advantages of a growing Chinese economy, resisting protectionist pressures, using the strategic economic dialogue ... to press toward an opening of the Chinese economy,” Rice said.

Other U.S. successes in Asia related to APEC are progress toward defusing the North Korean nuclear threat and the relaxation of tensions in relations between China and Taiwan because of the vast expansion of trade and investment across the Taiwan Strait.

With regard to Latin America, Rice said Bush has helped countries in the region adopt more pragmatic policies.

“The president has broken through an age-old struggle about ideology in Latin America. This is not a question of whether countries come from the left or from the right; it's really an issue of countries that are governing wisely, democratically, that have … economies that are open to trade and that invest in their people,” Rice said. She said the United States has friendly ties with left-leaning governments, such as Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, as well as with Colombia, a right-leaning one.

For more information, see a White House fact sheet on the APEC leaders meeting and a transcript of the Price briefing.