Last Friday's GBD conference on Pacific Arrangements opened with remarks from Ambassador Joe Hockey of Australia and then continued with two panels. The first panel talked about TPP and other trade arrangements in the Pacific from the perspective of governments in the Asia-Pacific. Business views were featured in the second panel. 

Jolene Tan is the Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Singapore. She led off the session on country perspectives, and she did so with the above clear statement of Singapore's support for open trade. She might have added that trade has been good to Singapore.   A country of just over 5.5 million people, Singapore has a per capita GBD over $82,000 (World Bank data). That's huge, and much of it is from trade. As Ms. Tan explained, "More than half of the jobs in Singapore are trade related."

Here are some of the other points Ms. Tan covered: 

Singapore's FTAs. Counting both bilateral and regional agreements, Singapore has 21 free trade agreements with 32 trading partners, and those agreements have been instrumental, Ms. Tan said, in "helping Singapore-based businesses expand overseas and also by enhancing the attractiveness of Singapore as an investment destination and as a financial hub."

The U.S.-Singapore FTA was signed in 2003 and went into effect in 2004. It was the first FTA the U.S. signed with an Asian country, and, Ms. Tan said, "it has been deemed the best performing FTA among your partners." As she explained, the volume of two-way trade between the U.S. and Singapore is substantial, about $64 billion a year. Moreover, the U.S. consistently runs a surplus with Singapore in both goods and services. 

Investment Flows. "Singapore is the second most popular destination [for U.S. investment] in the Asia-Pacific ... after Australia," Ms. Tan said. In 2014, America's investment in that island nation outpaced U.S. investments in both China and India. 

Singapore's Investments in the United States, Ms. Tan said, are currently valued at about $21 billion and have resulted in the creation of close to 33,000 U.S. jobs.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, TPP. "This year we hope to see our bonds strengthened even further with the swift ratification of the TPP," Ms. Tan said. Here is a bit more from her comments on TPP: 

Other Deals - RCEP. "TPP is not the only game in town. There are other trade deals that are being negotiated that the U.S. is not a party to," Ms. Tan said. One of those, of course, is RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

 
In response to a question, Ms. Tan talked a bit more about RCEP. She said: 

"The region of the Asia-Pacific consists of many countries of different development levels. It is not possible for all countries to just sign on to one deal. So RCEP and the negotiation that just recently happened in Australia made good progress, and all of our countries are committed to achieving the end goal of conclusion by the end of this year."

At one point in her presentation, Ms. Tan said, "Singapore and the United States share a fundamental common belief in open markets and in free trade." 

 
That used to be a truism - right up there with "motherhood and apple pie" -- but it is getting harder and harder to think of "open markets and free trade" as a shared, common belief, at least in the United States. But then again, the politics of motherhood have also gotten pretty complicated.

Note: Today's quote was taken from a GBD recording of the proceedings from last Friday's conference on Pacific Arrangements. We have not yet posted those audio files to the GBD website, though it is still our intention to do so. 

Countries by Per Capita GDP is a Wikepedia page that lists this information from three sources: the IMF, the World Bank, and the CIA.