Trudeau joins leaders in stressing free trade amid China tensions

OTTAWA • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined counterparts from both sides of the Pacific on Friday to sign a declaration focusing on free trade and digital innovation as a means to economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The communiqué from the Asia-pacific Economic Co-operation leaders’ summit — its first joint statement in three years — sought common ground on the fraught issues of free-flowing commerce and telecommunications networks.

It comes amid Canada’s tensions with China and the much bigger dispute between Beijing and Washington.

T he 21 APEC leaders stressed “co-ordinated action” on the pandemic at the meeting, hosted by Malaysia but held online because of the virus. They extended the sentiment of co-operation to international business, with signatories pledging “free, open, fair, non-discriminatory predictable trade.”

The so-called Kuala Lumpur Declaration also underscored “necessary reform” at the World Trade Organization, a process Canada has led among a handful of WTO members known as the Ottawa Group.

Words on a communiqué alone are unlikely to prompt China to lift restrictions on canola imports from Canada, imposed in March 2019 in apparent retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

The ban on canola shipments from two large Canadian exporters has cost the sector nearly $2 billion so far, the Canola Council of Canada said Friday.

The declaration placed a heavy emphasis on digital innovation, envisioning an “open, accessible and secure” telecommunications environment that would foster digital infrastructure development.

The apparent alignment belies a Western wariness of Chinese telecom firms such as Huawei, with APEC members Australia and the U.S. banning the tech giant from building 5G wireless networks while pressure ramps up to do likewise in Canada.

On Wednesday, a united federal opposition supported a Conservative motion to insist the Liberal government take a harder line against what it says are national security threats from Beijing as Ottawa mulls whether to allow Huawei to supply equipment for Canada’s next- generation 5G networks.

This year’s meeting comes days after China joined nearly a dozen other Asian countries, plus Australia and New Zealand, in inking what is being billed as the world’s largest free-trade agreement, which excludes Canada and the U.S.

Trudeau stopped short Thursday of saying Canada was interested in joining the new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, but instead suggested Ottawa would be watching to see how Beijing behaves in the trade deal.