When South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung welcomed Donald Trump in Gyeongju on Wednesday, he gave him an enormous gold crown – a replica of the broadest and tallest of those worn by kings of the Silla dynasty. The dynasty ruled the Korean peninsula for almost a thousand years, from 57 BC to 935 AD, and the grassy mounds Trump could see from the centre of the ancient capital are royal tombs.
Silla was the smallest of Korea’s three kingdoms but it succeeded in uniting the country where the bigger Goguryeo and Baekje failed. While the other two exhausted themselves in wars, sometimes against one another, Silla strengthened its position through foreign diplomacy and a policy of openness to culture and talent from abroad.
Trump made off with his crown before the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, meeting Xi Jinping at a military airbase in nearby Busan before flying back to Washington. For the leaders who will attend the meeting, including Xi and the prime ministers of Japan, Canada and Australia, the Silla kings might serve as an inspiration.
The brainchild of former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, Apec was founded in 1989 to promote open trade, regional economic integration and sustainable growth across the Pacific Rim. Its 21 participating states, which include the US, are called member economies and between them they account for almost 60 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) whose leaders met in Kuala Lumpur this week, Apec takes decisions by consensus rather than a majority vote. The forum’s central aim of promoting free trade is becoming more difficult amid the rise of protectionism, and particularly since Trump’s return to the White House.
Every time an Apec summit has produced a joint statement since 2021, the leaders have committed themselves to “a rules-based multilateral trading system with the WTO (World Trade Organisation) at its core”. But now that Trump has turned his back on that system, Apec chair South Korea could struggle to achieve consensus behind such a statement.
“It’s not as easy as expected,” South Korean foreign minister Cho Hyun said this week.
There was no such reticence when leaders from the participating states in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) met in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. Those states include 10 Asean member-states, along with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
“We reaffirmed our commitment to the WTO rules and principles as the foundations of an open, transparent, fair and rules-based multilateral trading system that ensures predictability and non-discrimination for all trading partners,“ they said. ”We underscored that regional integration pursued within the framework of the multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core, is fundamental to the region’s economic stability, resilience and long-term prosperity."
The RCEP is seldom mentioned in Europe and the US but it is the world’s largest trading bloc, accounting for almost a third of the world’s GDP and a third of its population. The EU, by comparison, accounts for about 15 per cent of global GDP and less than 6 per cent of the world’s population.
Conceived in 2012 as an Asean initiative to consolidate existing free-trade agreements, the RCEP adopted an agreement in 2020 committing them to reduce tariffs, simplify rules of origin, open markets for services to one another and promote digital trade. The leaders this week agreed to review the agreement in 2027 with a view to improving implementation and deepening economic integration.
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During his tour across Asia this week, Trump made deals covering trade or minerals with a number of countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea. These deals were hugely lopsided, with South Korea following Japan in agreeing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the US in return for lower tariffs.
Malaysia had to agree not to introduce a digital services tax and a number of countries agreed not to enter into certain kinds of deals with other countries that could disadvantage the US. The US is such an important trade and security partner for these countries that, like the EU a few months ago, they had no choice but to accept these unequal agreements.
Trump’s actions have added urgency to a process of economic integration in Asia that has been under way for years. And if the US president is not ready to contemplate the wisdom of the Silla kings, Xi is staying in Gyeongju until Saturday, giving himself plenty of time to do so.
