 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Feidell. This is Global Correlations. We're talking to Russell Hanluck. He's the Hawaii advisor to APEC, and APEC is coming up again. Welcome to the show, Russell. Yeah. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for inviting me again at this show. I know that APEC conferences in San Francisco without a leaders are getting together now. And hopefully it's going to be starting from November 12th through the 17th. And we just finished the one in Seattle, which they had the woman in economic forum there. And prior to that, I was there earlier prior to that meetings and try to help out the agriculture side and got some of the universities involved like Washington State University and some of these, because they're kind of advancing agriculture technology so they can supply the supply chain with Washington State as well as the whole West Coast with Oregon through California. We're one of the leaders and global leaders when it comes to food supply chain. So we should promote our agriculture and farmers so we can export more food to these developing nations that's widely needed. You mentioned that there was a U.S.-China summit meeting in San Francisco. What's the relationship of the U.S.-China summit meeting with APEC? Yeah, exactly. That's a very important meeting that the Xi Jinping and Joe Biden can meet on the sideline. As a matter of fact, I wrote a letter to them regarding to that they should meet on the sideline and kind of work on some of the trade agreement issues that was still pending when Donald Trump was a president when they put a lot of sanctions and trade tariffs on some of these imports that we brought. So it was that kick for tat and we can, some of these American products abroad in China still have export sanctions on it so we want to work on some of these trade issues and continue what we can go with the phase one status right now before we can go to the phase two that was under the Donald Trump administration. You wrote to Joe Biden and I think you wrote to Kamala Harris. What exactly did you suggest to them in your letter? Actually, I kind of suggested that you meet Xi Jinping and talk to them about some of the global issues that still pending not only in our trade and tariffs but the situation with the freedom of navigation, the manmade islands abroad, as well as the Taiwan issue that's very controversial because we don't want China to engage in a situation globally and what Russia is trying to do with the Ukraine war as what's happening in Israel with Hamas at the Gaza Strip and we're afraid that China might lean towards Russia to help them with the arms control and supply some of these goods to promote the war, global wars and we don't want them to get involved with the World War III kind of status with Taiwan and kind of with the situation what's going on with North Korea with Kim and Moon regime because I know that Vladimir Putin has met Kim and Moon and they had discussed some of those kind of issues. So they confirmed some things here. Do we know that both Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are going to be at this meeting in San Francisco? Do we know that? I think they haven't officially made announcement exactly where and what time they're going to meet but I know there's within the state officials through the foreign ministry as well with our state department. I know there's they're working on some of the logistics and agenda and I'm not privy to see exactly what they're trying to what agenda they're going to be discussing but I'm just kind of coming to make some suggestions from the overall picture which direction we should move based on what the past administration has done. So you gave some advice to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris about what should be discussed I guess at this summit. Did they respond to you? Did they agree or disagree? Did anybody from the White House contact you over it? Not exactly. They haven't made me an official acknowledgement saying that thank you or anything but I'm sure they had read it and know what the content is about and hopefully that in terms of Kamala Harris she'd been a vice president. I know she took the gavel during the Thailand summit and said that we're going to be hosting it in San Francisco so I hope she takes the leadership in charge and maybe we'll get India moldy to be there and we can maybe make announcement that India can be a member of the 22nd APEC organization and that might kind of enlighten a lot of the trade with India as well and have our better relationship with them. So is Kamala Harris going to be at the summit? I hope so definitely. She's the one that grabbed the gavel when she was at the Thailand summit last November so I know that Joe Biden had to go to the East Asia summit in ASEAN so the time conflict and had to go return back to Washington so I know Kalama Harris took the gavel instead and said hey we're going to have it in San Francisco so I hope that the people on the mayor over there, London Breed and the governor, Gavison Newsom, the governor of California is gearing up for this big gathering within the APEC Asia Pacific region leaders and hopefully the European Union leaders should be there because last couple days ago. Wait a minute, if this is an APEC meeting there are what 22 countries, 21 countries in APEC and those are the ones that are invited. I didn't know they included the European Union or anyone outside what Asia Pacific, it's all about Asia Pacific isn't it? Why these other countries involved? I think there are more like a sidelined observers I would say because I know that European Union want to work together with the APEC organization and I've been kind of pushing that matter of fact where the European Union with 28 countries plus Brexit can work together with the APEC organization which has 21 countries but if we include India it would be the 22nd member because all the other ASEAN countries who wants to be a member so we want to basically have this Eurasia infrastructure development back what China is trying to do but we're going to use an economic framework with the West countries because within the organization that I think will make it fair to all small and medium countries to get their fair share. You know Russell I thought that APEC rotated the venue around among its 21 members but we had APEC here what less than 10 years ago in Hawaii and now this is happening in San Francisco it's both places are in the United States. What happened to the rule about rotating so that every country gets a shot at it every 21 years? I think what happened was basically when we hosted in 2011 that's 12 years ago when President Barack Obama was the president and I happened to be in the APEC business advisory council representing Hawaii and I matter that got me started with coming up with a paper on working together with a small and medium enterprise should work with a large enterprise and I kind of critiqued some of the write-ups but anyways going back the rotation maybe because of the COVID and economic situation that we're in we need to have a stable country to host it and matter of fact next year Peru has going to be hosting the 2024 APEC conference and 2025 two years from now it's going to be hosted in South Korea so every two years they're going to have a voting. Now you've been following APEC for more than a decade for sure and you were the advisor to the APEC in what 2011 it took place here in Hawaii and you wrote the or at least you wrote a draft of the APEC master plan I'm assuming that's the framework the economic framework you talked about but question is how has APEC changed over the years because Russell the world has changed over the years and right now we have you know a number of hotspots around the world we have two active wars to say nothing about the Armenian conflict to say nothing about the Taiwan threat we have all kinds of stresses and strains and geopolitical issues and declines and one would think that APEC will have changed over the past few years during the Trump administration when he didn't really bring things together he rather separated them and like with his sanctions and the tension with China and so forth so how has APEC changed this ought to be in a stark meeting because of the changes and because of the tone and the relationships individually and by country what do you think I'm glad you asked that question I'm glad that you literate it up that J you know in terms of APEC I know but when I started we're all pushing for this Bogart amendment Bogart doctrine where by year of 2020 all APEC countries should have a free trade area in the Indo or Asia Pacific region we call the Indo Pacific region now but back then we call the Asia Pacific region and hopefully have a free trade agreement with those countries so in other ways all APEC regions through that I would say 60% of the global trade will have a free trade area and I was trying to make Hawaii and TPP was one of the free trade agreement for United States the Trans Pacific Partnership free trigger and China came up with the RCEP regional comprehensive free trade and got the ASEAN countries involved so hopefully there was a little conflict so that kind of persuaded when Donna Trump came in office he withdrew from the TPP and when Biden came in we call it now the economic framework so that is a new terminology that we use now economic framework and what is that hopefully we have India and Fiji involved with the TPP members but China is kind of getting smart so this meaning with all the geopolitical situation globally what's happening with the Ukraine war with the supply chain issues as well the Israel with the Hamas and the terrorist group with the Iran involved with the BRICS nation because the BRICS nations included Iran this other area so the Iran's are involved with it so there's a lot of players are involved with the geopolitical situation so I think what China wants to do with the Xi Jinping's meeting with Joe Biden is significant because they want to kind of understand what's going on globally with geopolitical China wants to play my major role to kind of be a intermediator or more like keep up with their peace plan that they submitted with the Ukraine war maybe and they want to make good ties with the United States and they can move forward in a better way instead of banging his and doing this kick foot act kind of trade war we need to resolve some of these sanctions and move forward with the trade issues that is very crucial because we're generating you know even Donna Trump when he pushed for the sanctions we grossed about 360 billion dollars annually on the sanctions so we kind of that's still sitting limbo so the US Treasury is collecting roughly about 360 billion dollars of trade tariffs import tax from what China that we bring but then it's giving price supports to the farmers and the like so it's really not a win a win for the US but let's move on let's go to the question of the United States attitude toward international agreements we have a time in our history right now ever since I kid it was revealed ever since Trump was in office and that is that we're isolationist and the republican party is isolationist and not too concerned with the international agreements and cooperation I imagine and not too concerned with APEC and so that that has been a real problem in terms of supporting countries that need our support such as Ukraine and Israel it's been a problem in dealing with the Armenian conflict you know and for that matter Taiwan so what I get though is that although the administration does the right thing and wants to do the right thing Congress is largely isolationist is anybody from Congress going to be at this summit is Congress interested in APEC is it interested in in Indo-Pacific is it interested in these diplomatic meetings and trade meetings that are that customarily take place at APEC or is it that they don't come and they don't care well good thing you asked me they do care just that the common people or the top 10% of the elites of the CEOs and the business and the chamber of commerce and the US chamber are precipitating on this with the international trade administration's US Commerce Department pushing for these kind of dialogues and trade shows beside the state department so you see a lot of the in terms of the leadership we just finished the G7 summit like you said the global leaders the G7 is pretty big with the European leaders there and they had it in Japan Japan hosted the ministers so I know that Anthony Blinken was there and they had a good dialogue and they were saying that how important global situation is and that they have to work together to bring harmony and peace again so in other words the G7 countries and the European Union are part of the G7 so they got representation there as well so that's going to be and I think they might be at the San Francisco APEC conference they're going to be a sideline observer so you'd be surprised you know there's people kind on this conference in San Francisco and hopefully we can revive and put that in their economic plan and make San Francisco like it was before the Pacific of a financial center and that might be a good approach and they need to restructure the Silicon Valley issues I know they're promoting hard on the artificial intelligence is anybody from Congress going to show up and anybody from the Republican party going to show up because after all this affects the country and it affects the world it certainly affects trade and the economy so so query do they care enough to come or are they just hiding and being isolationist well I'm not an insider for Washington DC but I know the United States trade representatives of office Catherine Tai she's our trade representative for under the executive office of the White House under Joe Biden administration so I know they're pushing hard for this and they're pushing for the economic framework to work and hopefully that's going to bring our friends and allies and partners together and do this your Asia infrastructure development so they want to bring the whoever wants to be part of our team wants to be part of the economic framework and I think that China wants to eventually want to be a member with the economic framework and instead of competing I know they want to work together so maybe with Xi Jinping and Joe Biden's going to be a crucial meeting and I hope that their friendship that they had in the past going to pay off and that we can move forward one thing that people are concerned about is China's attempt to steal our intellectual property and to steal our technology and to steal to hack and steal our data there's plenty of evidence about that including of course AI technology and you know there have been a number of revelations over that by intelligence agencies expressing great concern over China's of focused attempts to compete unfairly with the United States on technology and commercial secrets if you will and government secrets so query is this something that Joe Biden would be able to talk to Xi Jinping about are you are you suggesting that they discuss this I know within the trade representatives of their counterparts already trying to resolve this kind of issues but I know that in terms of spine espionage state with the state department they're still questioning what happened in the past with the spy balloon audience hacking within the Pentagon and the national security issues are very concerned and even with our intellectual property rights with infringement and copyrights you know in terms of those kind of matters has to be issued in order to we go on this trade phase two level that's still pending we haven't got to that phase two which talks about the intellectual property rights if they can get to that and prove that there are honorable country to honor these uh international property rights uh maybe we can make him a member of the economic framework that was that I made and what about uh you know the the uh South China Sea you mentioned it earlier it's it's really a problem and the the provocations are increasing around the South by China around the South China Sea uh on Filipino fishing and trade and of course uh on Taiwan and Taiwan Strait so so can this come up is this coming up in the APEC meeting in the summit in San Francisco well that gotta be included in the agenda I know there's a lot of subcommittees and in terms of us fishing wildlife in terms of uh uh turnage of the catch of the tuna and the fish that uh they do in an international water so I know there's association that looks at that kind of quota in terms of uh how much uh fishing uh natural resources that they can collect per year in terms of turnage so each country has that kind of regulation so I hope the international organization looks at that kind of uh matters I'm sure there is a concern I know the ASEAN countries are very concerned about that through their waters you know because they're that's their uh butter and bread for their livelihood so uh the fishery industry is very important to them well you know on South China Sea there was a case in front of the International Court in the Hague um regarding um you know maritime maritime freedom uh in in the South China Sea and uh China China didn't come even though China is a signatory to that agreement and and then the decision uh went against China and in favor of the Philippines a few years ago um and China has ignored the ignored the decision and so that raises the whole question about international bodies and organizations so we have here APEC which is important theoretically for economic framework but we also have the United Nations in the International Court in the Hague how what's the connection between this summit and APEC and the United Nations and the International Court um as you know J United Nation is a word opinion and uh it's formed after the World War two to have a word opinion of what countries are and APEC is similar to there's not a biding organization but it's a word opinion and voice that each countries and member can uh meet and tell the leaders and get the CEO businesses to understand what impacts in terms of economy and economic development and uh how they can move forward to feed our country and promote import export for the industry so that's what APEC stands for economic opportunity and cooperation and uh United Nation has this whole human they have different committees like uh trusteeship the social committee the security committee that very concerned with North Korea right now with Russian invasion of Ukraine and uh situates in Israel now they may be concerned about it but they haven't they haven't done anything about it the United Nations hasn't done anything with regard to the war crimes in Ukraine um or with regard to um you know the contention in the Middle East yeah I don't know how they could deal with China on some of these issues where China has staked the position has ignored the United Nations the International Court I mean is there any chance that at this meeting in San Francisco that China will change its position um about um about the Pacific about the South China Sea and so forth well I think going back to your first question about case of the Philippines before I answer your question Jay uh in Philippines case I remember when uh Durate was the president and uh when the International Court of Justice in terms of the man-made island territory or territorial issue of the international border lines uh they declared that it was against the law and uh and they awarded the Philippines to move forward with International Court so they can claim those man-made islands as Philippines but what happened was Xi Jinping made a deal with uh Durate so Durate didn't move forward with that but now with the new president Bon Bon Jr uh Marcus Flan uh Flan Marcus Flan Jr took the presidency so he's on the U.S. side because he was kind of racing Hawaii he understands the ramification of the military and department defense when we had the Subic Bay and Clark Air Force base and Subic Bay was a naval base so we have other other bases that's going to be in Philippines eventually but uh so what what's happening is that the the cars has turned around so if they want to they can still proceed with the International Court of Justice and Hague with those man-made islands and I think that's where the direction is going and to your question about Xi Jinping's uh situation with uh our national security uh issues uh I hope the working group bring those kind of issues and hope the state department and the counterpart uh uh Ziang or the uh their uh counselor of international foreign policy can bring those issues what uh Anthony Blinken our secretary and what what this meeting between Xi Jinping and uh Joe Biden at the APEC conference is probably more like a friendly kind of meeting that they understand which direction and they're going to get organizations committees together and try to resolve those kind of issue and saying that we're still friendship but what gets to me is a bad timing with those panda bears in Washington the zoo over there the Smithsonian Zoo they just left those uh three pandas going back to uh Beijing again so we need to bring back those panda bears back you know if we were under uh enhancer you know keep our relationship with uh China and Beijing what do you think it's going to be a what a four or five day uh conference in San Francisco I really wonder where there's enough time to discuss and at least um look at options for solutions uh especially between the US and China um and I actually have my doubt about it one thing one thing of concern though and maybe you can look back in your mind to what happened in 2011 is that this is uh you know economic cooperation it's not raw meat news like a war um or a provocation in the south China city it's economic cooperation APEC is not generally known and the the people of this country don't necessarily follow it and the press doesn't necessarily cover it um I wonder how much the press covered it in 2011 whether it covered it to your satisfaction and um Brian Schatz was actively involved on behalf of the state of Hawaii at that time I wonder if it covered it to his satisfaction and I wonder if you have any expectations on whether the press will be in San Francisco and whether the press will cover all these various issues um you know and contentions and options that should be discussed at this conference will the press be there what are your expectations about it oh yeah definitely there'll be a lot of international press news media you'd be surprised with Asia Pacific they'll be in the uh highlights and uh they'll be talking about it it's just that we need to promote that and uh move forward I remember when Brian Schatz was a lieutenant governor because uh uh became a uh US senator uh when Neil Abercombe and I took over that after that for the past 10 years so I kind of enhanced APEC Hawaii and what we stand for so globally they recognize Hawaii and they recognize us uh and we play a major contributing role to bring in peace security economic you know you say that but and indeed in 2011 Hawaii was there because APEC was happening at the convention center as I recall and there was a lot of um you know questions about security and uh and uh and trying to get people to understand this was a special situation a special international situation but now this summit is in San Francisco and you know you suggest that Hawaii has a role but what is Hawaii's role when the summit is in San Francisco what do you expect Hawaii is going to contribute or learn or influence this group I'm glad you mentioned that Jay uh in terms of not only academics and business we have our uh our Hawaiian culture we have our Hokulea Lobo Tur matter of fact in Seattle when I was there I was trying to hope uh promoting Hokulea is going to make this indigenous uh Lobo Tur with the uh Hawaiians and the Pacific Islanders so what we wanted to do was unite all the indigenous people from the Alaska Native Americans all the way down the coast of uh South America through the Incas and the Brazilians all the run down to the uh uh people that's so what what Hokulea's mission is uh bringing all the people together from their home country who are indigenous people and they're the backbone of those countries and uh they can share their knowledge they can share their environment their wisdom what sustainability is all about living off the earth and the land and uh then their culture exchange that is a big thing and next year's can be Peru did you know the proves they got the Incas there and the history oh the manning hood of South America so I think the hope the Hokulea truth is going to have a blast what about what about climate change can we offer them anything about our work on climate change oh yeah definitely you were still the we're the leaders in terms of uh Paris Agreement you know we came up the first uh green energy plan that we're going to be sustainability energy fossil fruit free by year 2020 45 and when Governor E. Gay was David E. Gay was a governor we signed a proclamation on that no is there anybody is there anybody from Hawaii who is going to go to San Francisco and present on climate change I'm not sure I'm not sure on that one who's going to be the one but uh I know that John Kerry our former Secretary of State is uh carrying the torch and uh making sure that we are sustainability you know overall with uh uh we're meeting the Paris Agreement hopefully we're trying to be a leader with the sensibility with energy free and kind of with the alternative energy source and all above okay we're out of time we're out of time Russell let me offer you one minute to summarize and leave whatever message you want to leave with our viewers take one minute well to the viewers I think that's economic summoning in San Francisco not only plays only the regional in terms of west coast or in Asia but I think it affects globally in terms of geopolitically what's happening with Ukraine with the supply chain issues with Russia invasion what's happening with Israel with Hamas and the terrorist group what's now we're getting all the other Palestinians and other terrorist groups that's kind of being backed by Syria Iran and human human just came up with the Kutini uh back with the Syrian war and Syria has that uh uh not besides Hamas they have different kind of terrorist groups that's coming up so uh it doesn't look good and I hope that in terms of Jewish people in Israel we support them because they think it's going to be a holy war they're the backbone of the Christianity or with Jerusalem and all that so uh I can see what Yahoo was mentioning when he summoned all the ambassadors there and told them that this is the holy war for the to the for the west end of the free democracy so I hope that doesn't escalate to Asia and uh affects the uh economic situation so maybe Charny can somehow work with uh situation and I'll tell Vladimir Putin to uh kind of you know detone and defuse some of these aggressions we got to go Russell uh thank you very very much really appreciate you coming on I I I hope the um this summit is successful thank you very much and uh I'll do this alone Aloha