PM Hwang failed to hold a summit during APEC meeting

Ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies adopted the Joint Statement reaffirming their pledges to reject the protectionism and to protect the free trade during meetings that were held on Saturday and Sunday (local time) in Lima, Peru. The joint statement was made in an effort to put on the brakes on trends of nationalism and isolationism that are spreading fast after Trump’s win of the U.S. presidency.

Countries have already begun to adopt protectionism to maximize their national interest regardless of certain concepts and ideologies, centering on advanced economies. As of 2015, the foreign direct investment of G20 countries reduced by 40 percent comparing to the period right before the financial crisis and the amount of bank lending among countries decreased about 2.6 trillion dollars for the past two years. It was due to that countries were focusing on growing domestic economies that greatly contributed to the GDP growth and job creation, while stressing the importance of free trade on the surface. Although U.S. President Barack Obama emphasized the need of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Peru, his final destination of overseas visits, the possibility to realize the TPP was decreased significantly as the incoming president Trump argued that the TPP was the worst trade deal ever.

For the first time since the World War II, the Group of Two (G2) and emerging economies are rushing to shift their positions to nationalism simultaneously. Likewise, a pledge of economic cooperation is nothing more than a political slogan in a world that most countries think that they need to reduce the interest of other countries in order for them to increase their interest. The recent issue of the Economist magazine raised concerns over a new nationalism and warned that the new nationalism is a big change that makes for a more dangerous world. It means that a shrinking trade pie increases the burden of life of the poor as well as the gap between the rich and the poor.

The economically weak class, which combines the low-income class and the households in the bottom levels of assets, accounts for almost 40 percent of the entire households in Korea. Feelings of deprivation of people below the middle class are compressed in our society and we do not know when they will burst their feelings. The U.K.'s Brexit vote and Donald Trump's U.S. election win were the result of such feelings of deprivation. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn attended the 2016 APEC meeting on behalf of President Park Geun-hye but failed to hold a summit with APEC leaders besides the president of hosting country Peru. The prime minister only argued the anthem of free trade during the meeting. This is the harsh reality of Korea now.