LIMA, Peru (AP) — Leaders of Pacific Rim countries including the U.S. and China gathered Friday in Peru for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, the first major global summit since U.
S. President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory. The annual gathering brings together 21 economies that jointly account for almost two-thirds of global GDP and half the world’s trade, according to organizers.
Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden joined China’s President Xi Jinping, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and others as the world wonders how a new U.
S. government might upend global dynamics. Leaders and other representatives will hold closed-door discussions in the morning, following a welcome address by Peru's President Dina Boluarte that focused on the need to promote inclusive growth and reduce informal labor in APEC economies.
“Our objective is to level the playing field, providing all the necessary tools for inclusion in social, financial and commercial spaces,” Boluarte said. “We are convinced that growth starts with inclusion and that this is only possible through the empowerment of the citizenry that is the motor of our economies.” APEC is bound to be one of Biden's last global summits before leaving office, and White House officials insist that his attendance as well as his subsequent visit to Brazil for the Group of 20.
