 ThinkTech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. The 1 o'clock block, Asia in Review. I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech, and we like to think globally. That's why we want to talk to Russell Hanma today. He is the author of the APEC Master Plan. Welcome to the show, Russell. Thank you for coming down. Well, thank you, Jay, for inviting me again. You know, this is a good subject, because as you know, next week we're going to be there's going to be an APEC conference in Portsby, Papua New Guinea. And I know all the leaders are getting together already. It starts up from November 12th through the 18th. And the APEC leaders going to be getting together on the November 17th and the 18th. And I believe this year our president, Donald Trump, will not be attending. So he's asking our vice president, Mike Pence, to attend. And besides the APEC, there's going to be an Asian East Asia Summit. And there will be an ASEAN Six Summit going on as well afterwards. So not in the same place. Not in the same place. They have their own venues. Yes, sir. They have their own little venue. OK. For those who don't know what APEC is, why don't you tell them, Russell? Well, APEC is, you know, I did a few shows in the past with yourself, Jay. You know, when I did come up with my APEC Master Plan, if you can Google me, there'll be all the listing of the APEC shows that I did with the ThinkTech Hawaii. But APEC is an Asia Pacific Economic Corporation and it involves 21 countries. And as you know, the first one that we hosted in the United States was in 1994, when President Clinton was a, Bill Clinton was a president. And we had it in Blake's Island in Washington by Seattle. And after that, we formulated the following year there was APEC National Center, you know, to get all our U.S. corporations together, especially our multinational or 50 blue chip corporations are part of our APEC sponsors. So they're going to be one of our with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So we have a lot of clout in terms of not only for political policy, but in terms of business, how we can penetrate into Asia Pacific region to do business for import, export, financial investments as well. Great possibilities. So you say 21 countries and these are Asia Pacific countries all around Asia Pacific. Yes, basically. And we do have some North American like in South America. We have Chile, Peru, Mexico and Canada is a member of APEC. I know a lot of Latin countries are looking into want to be part of the Asia Pacific region. If you're on the Pacific, you qualify now. Yes, that's up to the leaders to decide when they have their board meeting with the senior officials. But 21 has been the number for quite some time, yeah? Yes, it's been that way. I know that India wants to join in as a 22nd APEC country right now because they got a population of almost as an equivalent to what China has. One point four billion. China is a member of APEC. Yes, they're a member of APEC. In Japan and Korea, we assume that. And Taiwan is Taiwan a member of APEC? Yes, Taiwan is a matter of fact. Taiwan wants Taiwan, Hong Kong, even they're under that one China policy that China is trying to push. But we give them a seat with Hong Kong and Taiwan. So they have a voice so they can be sovereign in certain ways. One very interesting aspect of APEC is that the venue rotates among the 21. It's right. Every year it goes through a different member. And you only get to host it once, any given country only gets to host it every 21 years. Am I right? Not necessarily 21 years, but depending on the capability of the countries if they're willing to sponsor again. And last year it was sponsored in Vietnam prior to that. We did it in Peru and we did it in Philippines, Indonesia and China hosted as well. We in Russia as well. And in 2011, we hosted in Hawaii. I remember that well. That was really a very interesting experience for us. That's the time when we're talking about want to make TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership as one of the requirements under the Bogar Doctrine, where by year 2020 we want to have all Asian Pacific region with the 21 country APEC to have a free trade area in Asia Pacific region. So we wanted to use TPP as a driving force and expand TPP to to be as big as APEC. Yeah, but unfortunately with our current presidents and with the new administration, we withdraw from TPP. So I think they're kind of looking at our set as a means. But I know that just the 11 countries of the TPP members decided to they want to proceed and they ratified it within their without without United States being a member. So by end of December 30th, they're going to start implementing the new TPP. It's called Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. Let's dwell on that for a minute. What's the difference between TPP? I mean, assuming it it was realized as originally contemplated and APEC. Are they are they the same kind of organization? What's the difference? It's a different it's a different concept of it. But, you know, they want to use the same kind of platform because the TPP members are part of the APEC members. And but in the trade and trade and facilitation in trade and commerce wise, most of the time we go through our United States, like in our case, we go through a United States trade representatives office. Any trade agreement we make within different foreign countries is under the USTR's requirement or they justifies the means. And from there, we take it up to our Congress. So TPP, it's a treaty. It's an international agreement and it's at the level of a treaty. So TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership, that's a the concept is a trade agreement. You know, or and so if I have a tariff war going on, I probably I probably don't want to be part of TPP now because that's inconsistent, isn't it? Well, actually right now what's happening with like we just finished a NAFTA. They call it United States, Mexico and Canada trade agreement. Right. And it's the same kind of format, but that's a multilateral because it's not a bilateral. You're using two, three or four more countries. But in TPP case, we have 11 countries. If the United States was a member, we have 12 countries. So it's like they have in the same kind of terms and condition and they want to work out the bilateral first. So so if you look at my master plan that I drafted back in 2000. This is a state master plan for APEC. Well, actually, this is the APEC master plan drafted for our APEC organization to follow as a guidelines and based on that. And in that in certain segment of the master plan, I mentioned about the free trade agreement and they should all countries should do a bilateral first country to country. Then there's no misunderstanding of what the terms and condition are. Then from there, they can go into the multilateral and then you can they won't be able to supersede certain things because bilateral be a stronghold. And I think maybe that's what Trump is trying to do, is he's trying to strengthen the bilateral side. And from there, eventually he'll go into the multilateral. And I know that he's interested in rejoining the TPP again after he goes through the bilateral with country to country. Yeah. OK. So he wants to get an advantage on that country and he can negotiate what he thinks is a better agreement. But right now we were in a trade war with a number of countries in Asia, especially China, and we're not we don't have agreements with them. We just have tariffs. That's too bad. So the question really is, does APEC include this kind of trade agreement or is APEC involved in different kinds of issues? It's economic. That's part of its name. Yeah. So what what is the economic? I love this question. What is the APEC? What is the economic in APEC? What is it? Well, actually, they're so diversified. You know, it's not only for trade. Trade is one of the issues in terms of import, export of moving goods and services. And they want to come up with the harmonizing trade and facilitation kind of measure. So I know they have to come up with the regulations of the customs of import regulation. What's considered as tariff and non-tariff of each other? Export is one. Exactly. And like our case, we have to work with our U.S. Customs regulations here with our shipping industry, like what's happening with our steamship company or our cargo with IOTA. Shipping? In shipping, we have non-conference and conference carriers. We have, like, Matson, U.S. President's Line, Mars Line. So these are all major carriers, but they have to know, understand what goods and services that they're going to be, because they'll be the one that's carrying the cargo. Yeah, sure. And with whatever is on the manifest invoice, and they're going to, whenever it comes into a U.S. territory, the U.S. Customs going to look at that invoice on the manifest and see what's considered as tariff and non-tariff based on the country of origin of that country. So whatever trade agreements that we make with USTR's office, the U.S. Customs got to make sure that we're in the same scope. OK, so APEC is interested in those trade agreements. Exactly. But not the same thing as the TPP. Well, TPP, APEC. It's a multiple-party trade agreement, but APEC is interested in trade agreements in general. Is that the agreement? Actually, APEC, like I said before, with the Bogar doctrine in 1994 in Bogar, Indonesia, that's when all the leaders got together and decided that we need to come up with some kind of free trade area for Asia Pacific region. It's like coming up with a free trade agreement. So each country, all those 21 countries should go have some kind of understanding of bringing up the free trade issue with the free trade agreement with those 21 countries. Free trade and tariffs are 180 degrees inconsistent. Exactly. So worldwide, we might be the only countries that's been having that protectionist kind of movement right now. Before that, with the past administration, we're into the free trade agreements. So doesn't this undermine APEC in general? I mean, the reality is that they'll have the meeting. Pence will attend instead of Trump. Usually heads of state do attend these meetings, at least historically. And they did in 2011 when we had it here. But if we are at war and we're doing non-free trade-type initiatives, it doesn't undermine APEC completely? Well, actually, they're making a lot of adjustments. They understand what our current administration is going through with the bilateral trade agreements. And besides having protection of putting tariffs on it and maybe trying to see what kind of squeeze play that we can play. And a good example of what we're trying to do with China right now, we're giving all these kind of tariffs kind of a war. And we want these trade officials to come up with a better deal. So they're going to have to negotiate something. So what's happening right now, everybody's kind of leaving. China is going to be the big loser on this. Because a lot of investments are leaving their country. Now they're trying to look for another physical distribution network of chain of goods and services going to be in terms of country of origin. It's changing, shifting. So you see that regional kind of a manifestation in terms of trade. So if I go to Port Moresby in New Guinea last next week and I sit around and if I look at their program, I sit around and listen to what they're talking about. What am I going to hear? Right now, I think the leaders in Papua New Guinea, they got their own little problems. I know that last year they had a big hurricane. They had a big storm there. So they need to build their infrastructure within Indonesia as well. So in terms of humanitarian effects, another thing, because I'm more of a trade specialist. So in terms of trade and commerce, they're trying to harmonize the trade and facilitation, like I said, in terms of tariffs. And so that each country has a free trade status, so the country's got to come up with a better financial measures. So even last month, they had a finance minister who's got together and said, how we can orchestrate harmonizing the free trade in terms of financing the infrastructure and in terms of trade and commerce. So each country's got to come up with their own little strategic kind of plan. So well, could we have a product of this summit that gives us a better deal? When I say us, I mean everybody. Could this help Asia Pacific trade this year? I mean, for example, are there things that would be discussed that might ameliorate the contention over tariffs? Is this a place where they can reach agreement on things they have not agreed on before? Oh, definitely. There's a lot of avenues they can look into in terms of our public infrastructure. As you know, about a month ago, our Secretary of Transportation, because I'm into more transportation because I used to work for state DOT. And I know a lot about the international transportation measures. So our Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, mentioned that we are looking into the infrastructure projects nationwide. And so in other words, if you want these, in terms of bilateral agreement, China wants to help our economy in terms of infrastructure. They need to invest into our US soil, our engineering projects, in terms of roadway, in terms of public transportation. They got to be part. If they want to be a player, they got to be willing to be learning our ways of doing business in the US soil. Because we always go to their countries. And we did it according to their rules. And now it's their turn to come to our country to obey our rules. That's another point of attention, isn't it? Is Xi Jinping going to show up at APEC? I'm sure he'll be there. I'm sure he's a lot of other leaders going to be there because they got more stake now. And even the ASEAN countries, because of the trade war with US China, the ASEAN countries are benefiting. And some of these trades, in terms of labor and manufacturing, they're going to be shifting to those ASEAN countries. So it becomes more important than it was before. So why isn't Trump going? I mean, is he busy doing his agenda in the White House press briefing room or what? Because it seems to me that he's the businessman between him and Pence. And it would serve the national interest more if we had the president there, like other chiefs of state, who customarily go to APEC. Yeah, I think last year when Vietnam was hosting, he attended the Vietnam summit. So I know that the president is kind of looking at maybe the Papua New Guinea because of the situation right now with the trade war with China. He doesn't want to be scrutinized. So maybe in terms of protocol, our vice president, Mike Pence, might be a better individual to go there. But he's pretty diversified. And he's very knowledgeable internationally with foreign policy. So I think we have a good representation with our vice president, Mike Pence, there. And when our secretary of state, Mike Pompey, is going to be in there in the USTR's office, USTR's office. Well, I hope they make some progress. And I hope they ameliorate some of the contention. But let's shift through a minute to Hawaii. You're a Hawaii person. You were here when you wrote the APEC master plan. You certainly participated in the 2011 APEC summit here. It took place. And you're following it closely, as closely as anybody I know, year to year, summit to summit. But I don't hear it from a lot of people. I don't see it reported in the press, even in international organizations. It doesn't seem to be discussed. Now, people have said for years and years for generations and many decades that Hawaii should be the bridge to Asia. Hawaii should be the Switzerland of the Pacific. Hawaii should be connected to both sides of the equation. Shouldn't we be doing more, Russell? Don't you think that Hawaii has to do more to achieve its destiny as the center, business center of the Pacific, don't you think? Yeah, definitely. I think it's in terms of educational realization of our leaders here locally. I've been bringing this up to our legislature, our young leaders that's coming up in our political standings here. And even with the Chamber of Commerce, with the young business leaders that we need to get more internationalized. Even with our media, our reporters, a lot of them are my Facebook friends. And I gave them a lot of my correspondence to our major networks here and let them realize what's happening globally or in terms of Asia-Pacific region. So I noticed a lot of these reporters are getting more akama here and they're realizing what's happening in international. I'm kind of pleased that some of the reporting of the news that there's a lot of more international news in Hawaii. I wish that were happening, but you know, if I look at what's offered on television, for example, which is a way a lot of people, if not most people get their news these days, I see the Trump show every day, every day, and during the morning, evening, and night. I say to myself, that kind of thing is really not constructive for the country. We should be thinking of more constructive things to talk about. We should reporting issues and initiatives that are more constructive for the future of the country economically and otherwise, but we don't seem to do that. And so what I get is that we could talk about this. We could continue that education. We could raise awareness and consciousness in the legislature, in the executive, and among the public about how important it is for Hawaii to participate in this. But instead, we follow the action, so to speak, in Washington with this administration. And I'm sad about that. Are you sad about that? Yeah, I think in terms of bureaucracy, I know that we don't really practice our freedom of the press here in terms of our freedom of expression. I notice that we need to do that more. We need to get more liberal people on the shows to express what's happening locally and with our community. And I think even yourself, Jay, I know that, you know, with the Think Tank Hawaii show, it's grown so much and we have so much Akamai people here with us specializing and we're so diversified here with just the wealth of knowledge that we have in Hawaii. So that's a start already. We have that and they can gloom the young people and have that wisdom and be more vocal and have that voice. Oh, so, so I ask you this, if you were governor, and Governor Rega is the governor, but if you were governor, if you were him, what would you do to raise awareness and to get Hawaii connected to APEC, to Asia Pacific business, trade and business, and, you know, be part of the Asia Pacific community in a global sense, be a part. What would you do as governor? I think if he was the governor, I guess the governor, he'd get realized that he's kind of getting more internationally and understanding the foreign policy of that affects Hawaii. Maybe he can start attending a lot of these international conferences and maybe, you know, himself can go to APEC and start up to even a PPEC, Pacific Economic Cooperation or Consul they had that we used to host to here a few years ago. What's that acronym? PBEC, member of Pacific Business Economic Consul and we hosted here, we've got out of the business side, not only not PBEC, but with APEC as well. We have so many avenues, even with the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce and the Ethernet Quad Chamber of Commerce that we have here, we can try to, but the governor's, you know, maybe in terms of having a place like a gathering place, I propose this in the past with the state legislature that we should have a world-class war trade center. And within that war trade center, we should designate that as an Asia Pacific free trade area, meeting the Bogart doctrine. That's what I was pushing for that. My scheme was, my strategic plan was making TPP headquarters and have that in the war trade center in Hawaii. So all the trade businesses from Asia Pacific can have a gathering place and they can come here and discuss about the trade issues, what goods and service that can be. We can use the import, export, the trade facilitation or shipping as well with our ocean and air cargo and any business that's generated in Hawaii is under our American law with openness, with due diligence and transparency that we can use our American law here and keep things more fairness. And that was my vision. And... Has it changed? Is that still your vision today, Russell? Well, it's just that matter of we wanna push for the war trade center and have, and designate Hawaii as a free trade area for Asia Pacific region. And we can apply the foreign trade zone and the state enterprise act, in terms of you don't pay the capital gains tax for federal side and doing business in Hawaii and the state level level state enterprise act. You know, it kind of works out both ways. And it provides incentives of various kinds for trade. Exactly, exactly. So, okay, the last area I wanted to ask you about is, you know, it's public awareness. Because I think if you walk down the street and here on Bishop Street or on Fort Street Mall, then you ask 10 people what APEC was, they wouldn't know what it was. I'm really sorry about that too. You must be sorry about that. Well, I think I might be some kind of cocktail or something, I'll tell that in New York City so what is APEC, oh, it must be a cocktail drink. I've been in the East Coast. So, I'd like you to talk to the high school kids, okay? And maybe we can include some college kids that you age whatnot, HPU. There's camera one. What would you tell them, Russell, about their duty as, you know, incipient citizens of this state and the business community in the state, concerned about the future of the state economically, what would you tell them they need to do? And you could include travel, I mean, going places, but what would you, there's camera one right there. Actually, it's a good example is that the students can do the student exchange program, even with the Asian Pacific Council that we have here. Each high school has that kind of chapter or they should start up some kind of Asian Pacific Council there and, you know, have these, and work with the other high schools that wants to do a student exchange program, take field trips and understanding. And I think the curriculum has got to change too. I think that department education can, in terms of social studies, they can include an international Asia Pacific region as one of the histories as well with European history. But I think that's a start. It's just awareness of getting the students to realize. And I think already with the tourism that we have here, I know that a lot of the students, young ones, they realize that there's so many Asians that live here and why so. That's a start. But what about trade? You know, Hawaii is, at best, a sort of drop shipment place for trade. And, you know, we know the real big trade is going to be between Asia and the West Coast or Canada or South America, not necessarily with Hawaii. So how does one of these students get involved in a business? How can one of these students become expert in trade, import, export, what have you, in participating in the very trade that APEC is about and that TPP would be about? Tell them that too. Well, I think it's just, it's not for everybody. I think it's going to be for people that's going to be, might be beneficial, is that they're going to have shown interest of that country if you're willing to learn about their culture, language. You know, the ones that's already bilingual in terms of a culture or understanding, they might have the competitive edge already. But in terms of Hawaii students, we need to get more exposure on that. And I think it's happening right now. Even our university system, like the U.H., is we're getting so many international students there. So I think the local students can mingle with them and try to, you know, become good friends and work out. Learn the language. Yeah, learn the language is a big thing. Learn the culture. Become experts. This ought to be a state of experts in Asia. Yeah, I think you weigh another, you know, 20, 30 years of next generation of kids or like our grandchildren's kids. I think a lot of it, we're going to see more international people living in Hawaii that can bridge the gap with the Asian Pacific country. And you know, what's good for Hawaii. That's what I'm hoping for. Russell Hahn, author of the APEC Master Plan here on Asia in Review talking about the APEC conference in Fort Moresby just starting on Monday. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Jay. Aloha. Aloha.