IF the Philippines intends to boost shipments and export freely to Canada, then it has to enlist in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a diplomat said on Thursday.
Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines John Thomas Holmes said Ottawa is committed to improving trade with Manila, but that commitment comes with a price. The best way to boost two-way trade, he argued, is for the Philippines to jump ship to the CPTPP, the largest trade agreement signed to date.
“The easiest
solution [to better trade] is for the Philippines to join the CPTPP,”
Holmes said at the BusinessMirror
Coffee Club forum.
CPTPP parties represent roughly 495 million people and a combined GDP of $13.5 trillion. The CPTPP is a trade deal involving Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The United States used to be a negotiator of the trade deal, but opted out upon the directive of President Donald J. Trump, who views multilateral deals as disadvantageous to Washington’s interests.
“Canada is a trading country. We are talking about Nafta [North American Free Trade Agreement], the agreement with the Europeans, the Ceta [Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement] and the CPTPP,” Holmes explained.
“If you take those three big agreements, Canada is now one of the most integrated economies vis-à-vis international trade agreement. We are in Europe [and] in the US and Mexico. We are in the 10 other countries of the CPTPP,” he added.
Enlisting in the CPTPP will also ensure the Philippines will not be affected by any trade remedy Canada applies on imports, especially in steel. Canada is a relentless user of trade remedies and has 83 definitive antidumping measures in place as of 2018.
It is one of the country’s potential markets for steel products, as SteelAsia Manufacturing Corp. in March shipped 10,000 metric tons of rebars to Canada.
“We are happy to see that the Philippines is benefiting from that [Canada being the world’s 16th-largest steel importer]. We don’t see this as a zero-sum game, [as] we see this as beneficial to both economies,” Holmes said.
The proposal to enlist the Philippines in the CPTPP has been one of the focal advocacies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Business Advisory Council.
In a memorandum to Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez last year, the group said Manila should seriously consider joining the CPTPP. The country will apparently be left out in the region if it allows Southeast Asian peers Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam to reap all the benefits of the largest trade deal to date.
However, trade officials had said the government is focused on concluding the long-delayed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), of which negotiating parties are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Government data reported bilateral trade between the Philippines and Canada grew 16.66 percent to $1.4 billion last year, from $1.2 billion in 2017. The improved merchandise trade was largely brought about by increased imports from Canada that expanded 19.77 percent to $800.71 million, from $668.53 million. Shipments to Canada also improved 11.45 percent to $600.28 million, from $538.6 million.