From Nov. 11-17, leaders from 20 nations across the Pacific Rim gathered in San Francisco for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. An activist coalition known as No to APEC greeted the visiting world leaders with a countersummit decrying APEC as a forum to advance the interests of transnational corporations at the expense of workers and the environment. While the Biden administration worked to construct a new free trade regime in the Pacific exclusive of China, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), grassroots organizations in the No to APEC Coalition advanced an alternate vision of international cooperation and development in opposition to the corporate, pro-war agenda pushed by the US and allied governments at APEC. The Real News speaks with Nina Macapinlac of the No to APEC Coalition Steering Committee.
Nina Macapinlac is the Secretary General of BAYAN USA (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan). They also serve on the Steering Committee of the US Country Chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), an alliance of over 300 organizations around the world fighting imperialism.
Studio Production: Adam Coley
Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
Ju-Hyun Park: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Juhyun Park and I’ll be your host for this episode. Today, we’ll be discussing APEC, or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the IPEF, or the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework: Two US trade initiatives in the Pacific region that seek to uphold American economic dominance over the world at the expense of workers, the environment, and very possibly, a peaceful future. We’ll be speaking with Nina Macapinlac of BAYAN-USA, a core organization at the helm of the No to APEC Coalition that shut down the recent APEC Summit in San Francisco, attended by the leaders of 20 countries from across the Pacific Rim.
As always, before we begin, I’d like to thank all the listeners and readers of this program on behalf of the entire Real News team. The Real News is a totally independent and not-for-profit outlet dedicated to uplifting the stories of working people and popular struggles around the world. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t run ads, and we don’t do paid subscriptions. Our operations depend on the generosity of hardworking people like you. As we approach the end of the year, we’re in a final push to secure our funding for the year to come. 2024 is going to be momentous and you need all the information you can get to be equipped effectively to help make a change in this world. Help us help you by pitching in to sustain our work at The Real News. Visit therealnews.com/donate. Every dollar you give helps power our reporting and keeps you informed about the events and trends shaping the world around us.
Last month, from November 11-17, 20 world leaders gathered in San Francisco for the 2023 APEC Summit. Their presence was met with staunch opposition as 10,000 local protesters gathered at the opening ceremony of the summit to denounce APEC. Over the following days, activists from a broad coalition of organizations hosted a people’s counter-summit against APEC, which they described as a forum that promotes the interests of big business and transnational corporations over the working class, the environment, and the cost of peace around the world.
Joining The Real News today to discuss APEC and the People’s Counter Summit is Nina Macapinlac, the Secretary General of BAYAN-USA which stands for Bagong Alyansang Makabayan. BAYAN is the first overseas chapter of BAYAN Philippines, an anti-imperialist, multi-sectoral alliance of organizations fighting for national democracy in the Philippines. Nina serves on the steering committee of the US Country Chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle or ILPS, an alliance of over 300 organizations around the world fighting imperialism. They also sat on the steering committee of the No to APEC Coalition that organized a counter-summit and mobilized against the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC, which was hosted in San Francisco. Nina is based in Philadelphia. Nina, thanks so much for joining The Real News.
Nina Macapinlac: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Ju-Hyun Park: I’m hoping you can start by introducing our audience to you, to your organization, and if possible, to the new democratic movement in the Philippines.
Nina Macapinlac: Yeah, of course. So BAYAN stands for Bagong Alyansang Makabayan which Ju-Hyun already explained and it translates to New Patriotic Alliance. It is an anti-imperialist and multi-sectoral alliance of organizations fighting for national liberation and genuine democracy in the Philippines. As mentioned already, BAYAN-USA is the first overseas chapter of BAYAN. As an alliance, BAYAN includes organizations from all sectors in the oppressed classes of Philippine society like youth and students, workers, peasants, women, and gender-oppressed people, even people of faith, health professionals, government workers, etc.
All BAYAN organizations are united in the analysis that the Philippines is semi-colonial and semi-feudal, meaning it remains subservient to the interests of its former colonial master, the US, and semi-feudal in that it is purposefully underdeveloped as an agrarian country and primarily serves to provide cheap resources and labor to imperious powers like the US. Our goal as BAYAN is to bring down the three fundamental problems of Philippine society which are imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism with a perspective of building a socialist society.
Ju-Hyun Park: Thanks so much. Now, for those uninitiated, could you explain some of the basics of APEC? What is it? How did it come about? And why do BAYAN and other organizations oppose it?
Nina Macapinlac: Yeah. So APEC describes itself as an inter-governmental forum to promote free trade in the Asia-Pacific. It’s a multilateral forum of 21 member economies including the US, Mexico, and China. It brings together economic and political leaders like heads of state, economic ministers, global industry giants, corporate lobbyists, and billionaires. But they do not include representatives of vulnerable and impacted sectors like women and workers of the global south, Indigenous, environmental, and human rights advocates.
APEC was founded in 1989 in Australia and actually started with 12 member economies and has since grown. In 1994, they met in Indonesia to set up the goals of the organization which is to eliminate all barriers to free trade and investment by 2020. APEC exists because the Asia-Pacific is a very important region economically, especially to the US. 75% of all global mining trade and investment are in the region and contains 7 of the top 10 overall trading partners for the US. The Asia-Pacific is a destination for more than 60% of US goods.
BAYAN and other organizations oppose APEC because it is a tool to advance imperialist economic and political interests in our home countries. APEC isn’t a governing or regulatory body but encourages countries to pursue bilateral or multilateral trade agreements that are extremely dangerous and harmful. The guiding theory and practice for APEC is neoliberalism which supposedly promotes development and wealth in countries. But in actuality, neoliberalism promotes profit for the wealthy elite through privatization which diminishes public services, deregulation which loosens laws that regulate businesses’ accumulation of profit, and liberalization which relaxes the laws of a country to allow total freedom of foreign investments, goods, and services to maximize profit.
Ju-Hyun Park: Thanks for that overview. I’m wondering if we can zoom in a little bit on the experience of the Philippines since that is the country that your organization represents the most. What is the reality on the ground when we talk about APEC existing to promote an imperialist economic framework? What does that mean for working people in the Philippines? Taking that as an example.
Nina Macapinlac: Yes. That’s a really good question. So these measures ultimately will worsen the Philippines’ economic conditions which are already in dire crisis. The Philippines has the highest inflation rate in Southeast Asia. Measures like IPEF and other free trade agreements would lessen restrictions and protections for workers, thus opening more opportunities for exploitation. It would mean driving up the costs of basic goods like food, oil, gas, and water which is already very unaffordable in the Philippines but would make it even more so. Overseas workers’ remittances would be worth less because of these increased prices coupled with inflation in the US leaving Filipino workers with less money to send home.
So APEC and institutions like it hide behind green and technological innovations which are really at the expense of everyday Filipinos and reap more profits through things like jeepney privatization. There is a big movement in the Philippines right now against the privatization of the traditional jeepneys, a very colorful public utility vehicle that the Philippines is known for. And Marcos, the president of the Philippines, is saying that it’s in the name of promoting green technology but really, it means dashing the livelihoods of workers and also privatizing public transportation in the Philippines.
So these are some examples. Another major thing is policies bartered through APEC would increase over-reliance on imports that disenfranchise peasants and farmers and maintain the agricultural sector as a means to produce cash crops for export. So those are what measures bartered through APEC would mean for the Filipino people.
Ju-Hyun Park: So what you’re describing there is a process by which the entire Philippine economy is being remade for the benefit of capital that’s primarily based out of the US, whether it’s taking over the agricultural sector, transforming the transportation system to benefit US transnationals, even at the level of what you were talking about remittances. The Philippines is engaged in such a massive pattern of the export of its labor, really the export of its people, to economies like the US where folks end up working in the healthcare sector, as domestic workers, and many, many other critical service sectors because they are drawn over by the need to earn higher wages that aren’t possible in the Philippines. So what you’re spelling out here is an unequal relationship that exists between countries like the Philippines and countries like the US. And the role of APEC from what you’re describing seems to be to facilitate that. Would you say that’s correct?
Nina Macapinlac: Yes. That’s exactly right.
Ju-Hyun Park: You mentioned a little bit about IPEF or the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Could you walk our audience through exactly what that is?
Nina Macapinlac: Yes. So the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is a US-led agreement, or they say framework because free trade agreement has become a bad word recently. So it’s a framework with 13 countries including India which is not a member of APEC and it’s a free trade agreement repackaged in post-pandemic language of fostering resiliency and climate-smart sustainable production. IPEF is the trade aspect of America’s desperate attempt to gain the upper hand in its competition with China.
Ju-Hyun Park: Could you say a little bit more about that last portion? The China-US angle seemed to be important at this most recent APEC Summit. To provide the audience with a couple of examples, there was one bizarre moment where President Biden called President Xi Jinping a dictator to his face and then, when challenged on it said, well, he is the leader of a foreign country with a system different than ours so that makes him a dictator. I don’t have a dictionary on hand but I don’t believe that’s the definition.
And then a day or two later, he got up during a meeting and then randomly hugged Xi Jinping in the presence of many other world leaders as well. So there was this mercurial, ambivalent approach that the US was taking towards China throughout the Summit, playing on the one hand extremely antagonistically, at points sometimes rudely, and at others bizarrely flipping the script and attempting to engage in a little bit of rapprochement. So I’m wondering if you can explain a little bit to us how the US-China angle fits into the politics of APEC at this time and the IPEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
Nina Macapinlac: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. I can also elaborate more. So the IPEF would set rules not only for trade but also for supply chains, clean energy infrastructure, and taxes for over 3 billion people. The goal of the US is to introduce this trade deal to create a framework and coerce less powerful countries like the Philippines to center their domestic policies and their economies around US interests. So, the IPEF is the latest effort of the US and fortunately, it flopped. Though supposedly, they’re going to expedite it in the coming weeks. But IPEF is the US’s latest effort to ensure control and assert power over the Indo-Pacific region as inter-imperialist conflict with China heightens. China is launching its trade agreement framework which is called RCEP, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and it does not include the US.
So IPEF is a strategic economic and military measure to support US state interests and US corporate greed in the Asia-Pacific region. And the goal of IPEF, and honestly, the US’s main objective in APEC, is to isolate China. So yeah, you mentioned those funny instances and it demonstrates the “frenemy” situation that the US and China have because they need each other in trade dealings but at the same time, they’re competing imperialist powers. That is an important thing to highlight in terms of APEC as a platform. I don’t know if we’re going to talk about the US military and APEC also or… Is this where I should talk about that or –
Ju-Hyun Park: It seems like that’s where you want to take the conversation, so please.
Nina Macapinlac: – Okay. Okay, okay. Yeah. For sure. What I was going to say… Sorry. You can cut out some of those other things. APEC is important as a vehicle to reinforce and project US hegemony and militarism in the Asia-Pacific region within the framework of the “New Cold War” that the US has been unleashing on China. So in line with its Indo-Pacific strategy, the US backs up its trade agenda by deploying military forces, expanding overseas bases, and forging new military agreements with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and other countries in the Pacific to isolate and contain China. In general, that’s how it works. Neoliberal policies and militarism go hand in hand.
Yeah. To zoom in into an example of an outcome of APEC, in terms of these tensions between the US and China and how it affects countries like the Philippines that are essentially in the crosshairs of war, was the $672 million worth of investment pledges from US corporations that the Philippine government brought home. And a Seattle-based, ultra-safe nuclear corporation and the Manila Electric Company signed an agreement last week allowing the former to study the deployment of nuclear micro-reactors in the Philippines as a source of “clean energy”.
And this was made possible by something called the 123 Agreement which was signed by the US and the Philippines, allowing for the US to export nuclear technology and material to the Philippines. So, while this seemingly beneficial policy looks good on paper, looks good in terms of clean energy, etc., the agreement would give USMC, the company, the ability to fully control and profit from the resources in the Philippines which has allowed 100% foreign ownership over clean energy projects.
So you can see a direct impact on the national sovereignty of the country of the Philippines. Furthermore, this storage of nuclear materials will set a precedent for the US to allow a nuclear arsenal to be stored in the Philippines. With the rising tensions between the US and China and the Philippines historically being a launching pad for war in the Asia-Pacific, this is extremely dangerous for the Filipino people. We’re already seeing ongoing war game exercises between the US, Philippines, South Korea, and Japan. So you can see an example right there during the APEC week of how militarism and these neoliberal economic policies serve each other at the expense of regular working people.
Ju-Hyun Park: Thank you for walking us through that. It sounds to me like we could be looking at a Cuban missile crisis-style situation in the Philippines if this arrangement proceeds. And I would note that there have been whispers and talks of the US deploying nuclear assets as well to the Korean Peninsula and many other countries in the Asia-Pacific. There was a recent deal with Papua New Guinea whereby the US gained access to, I believe, the majority of its airports and its naval ports as well which can also be used towards mobilization for the sake of a regional war. This would engulf the entire world since we’re talking about one of the most populated, economically significant regions on the planet.
I’m wondering, diving in a little bit deeper on this issue, taking our audience through to understanding what the local political context in the Philippines is right now, given that there was the Duterte government and now we see the return of Marcos. So where is the Philippines politically at this time?
Nina Macapinlac: Currently, the son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., his name is “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., is in power after a 30-year-long disinformation campaign to allow his family to claw out of the hole of shame that they were in after the ouster of his family. Yeah. So right now, Marcos Jr. is focusing on foreign investments flooding the Philippines as a way of resolving the dire economic crisis that’s happening. Like I mentioned earlier, the Philippines has the highest inflation rate in Southeast Asia currently and prices keep skyrocketing every week and people are making very meager wages. There’s a recent mass struggle campaign to fight for a higher daily minimum wage. Their demand was less than $15 a day. And that’s how little workers in the Philippines make. At most, they would make $12 a day under the current national minimum wage laws and that’s only if you’re in the National Capital Region. In other places in the Philippines, people make as little as 13 cents a day, especially in the countryside. And the Philippines is a primarily agrarian country, so 75% of the population are peasant farmers.
So in that light, instead of raising the minimum wage and trying to relieve the economic woes of the people, Marcos Jr. is going around trying to close in on these foreign investment deals that really will only enrich the wealthy elite in the Philippines. He’s also currently trying to change the constitution of the Philippines which has been a thing that administrations have been trying to do for a long time. But that’s one of his initiatives as well, trying to increase the term limits of the president which is very reminiscent of his dictator father. The economic situation in the Philippines is very dire and Marcos is really on this quest to rebrand dictatorship. He’s on this quest to promote historical revisionism and change the narrative of his family. They even removed Marcos’s name in the recent People Power Commemoration Day that the Philippines has and multiple attempts, honestly, of trying to wash away the dishonor on their family name. Yeah. So I’ll stop there but…
Oh. One other thing to note is that Marcos has spent so much time abroad compared to being at home in the Philippines to govern. His trip to San Francisco was his 18th trip abroad in 16 months in office. So you can see that Marcos is selling out the Philippines to the highest bidder, most especially to the US, and he’s also proven that he’ll continue to prioritize the US’s interests even at the expense of the Filipino people’s well-being and our country’s sovereignty. So while economic crises are going on, he’s out here bartering these investment deals, he’s out here building these new US bases. Well, they’re Philippine bases that the US has access to which is more insidious because then the Philippines has to build it and the US pays no rent to operate it. And if you notice all of these bases that the US now has access to, all face Taiwan and China.
So you can see that Marcos is compliant with the escalation of the US against China and putting Filipinos in danger. We’re already seeing fishing communities being harmed by these military exercises that are happening near them where the bases are being constructed. Marcos keeps saying that this is for the sake of protecting the Philippine’s sovereignty because China keeps making incursions on the West Philippine Sea but so far, there has been no actual change. China has attacked a Philippine vessel recently. The US keeps saying that they have this iron-clad commitment to protect the Philippines but we don’t see it. We don’t see any improvements. What we’re seeing is creating the conditions for more aggression and violence in our country.
Ju-Hyun Park: The point you made picks up on the South China Sea territorial disputes. I’m wondering, in your view, would the withdrawal of a US presence help to allow for a more multi-lateral process of negotiation between the countries that border the South China Sea?
Nina Macapinlac: Yeah. I would say so. The US military pulling out of the Philippines and the US pulling out of the economic dominance that it has over the Philippines also affects the Philippines’ ability to defend itself. If the Philippines is allowed to develop a strong national economy and build up its capacity for defense, the Philippines would have a stronger chance to build itself up and defend its national sovereignty. Yeah. And the US has no role in the affairs of Asian countries or any country for that matter. We as BAYAN, call for the US out of the Philippines both in the military and economic realms.
Ju-Hyun Park: Thank you. Yeah. At the very least, China does in fact border the South China Sea so it’s more of a logical party in terms of figuring out what exactly that maritime agreement should be. Whereas the US is thousands of miles away, and has no shore that borders the South China Sea. The Philippines does not count since it’s been nominally independent since at least the 1940s. Let’s pivot to talking about the counter-summit itself. So BAYAN and other organizations hosted a counter summit in San Francisco that was concurrent with the actual APEC Summit occurring at the same time. Can you tell us a little bit about this event, what the goals of the counter-summit were, and what happened there?
Nina Macapinlac: The No to APEC Coalition successfully held an anti-APEC counter summit that had about 1000 people hosted in San Francisco and the objectives were to expose and oppose APEC as an instrument for imperialist plunder, exploitation, and war. At the summit, we also aimed to increase people’s understanding of neoliberalism, its impacts, and current manifestations in local communities in the US and around the world, particularly oppressed peoples and nations in the Asia-Pacific. That was on November 11. Then on November 12, the coalition held a 10,000-person rally that marched to the gates of the APEC exclusion zone. And then throughout the week, we saw direct actions that disrupted and delayed the APEC activities, notably the APEC CEO Summit and Studies Consortium.
There were also actions against the fascist heads of state throughout the week like the Philippines’ Marcos, Japan’s Kishida, Korea’s Yoon, Peru’s illegitimate Boluarte, and even Biden himself, so there’s a united message of war criminals out of San Francisco. Throughout the week, the coalition also supported the many actions to free Palestine while the APEC heads of state were in town. Also, weapons manufacturers were in town as well. One of these actions was the shutdown of the Bay Bridge, leading to the arrests of around 100 courageous activists. So that all happened that week. At the summit itself, it was an opportunity for organizers and participants to come together and not just talk about APEC but talk about their struggles, especially national liberation struggles, and the struggles of oppressed and marginalized communities here in the US and around the world.
So that was something that was very important to us as a coalition. Not just exposing the details and impacts of APEC but also the importance of uplifting people’s struggles against imperialism as a whole. So there were groups that were reigning from Pacifica, Palestine, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, all organizations present at the summit. It was a beautiful demonstration of solidarity, especially since this APEC Summit was the first global assembly since the start of the siege on Gaza. So Palestine was very much at the forefront of the summit and the mobilization as well.
Ju-Hyun Park: What alternate vision, speaking of this people-centered approach, would a people-centered approach towards these questions of development and peace in the Pacific region look like, do you think? What is the vision that the No to APEC Coalition could put forward as a counter to the vision that’s represented by APEC itself?
Nina Macapinlac: Yes. So the coalition is very broad. It brings together organizations that have different political stripes and visions of what an alternative world could look like. I can’t speak on the coalition basically, but broadly, the summit talked about the need for peoples to be able to determine their destiny, to be able to have sovereignty of their nations, of their communities, and how APEC, as an instrument of imperialism, doesn’t make it possible for that to happen. So in that respect, that’s what we’re united on but in terms of the details of that, because it is such a broad coalition which is beautiful to see, I’m sure there are different visions of the type of world that these different organizations would want.
Ju-Hyun Park: Perhaps a better way to phrase the question would be, how would you articulate that alternative vision?
Nina Macapinlac: Yeah. BAYAN has a program. So the points on our program that we would want for are free Philippines, but honestly would also extend to how we would view an alternative world for others. But of course, that’s for other people to determine. So number one, we want to be able to uphold genuine national sovereignty, two, we want to be able to unite the Filipino people and build their collective strength. So really, uniting the different classes of society to build the foundation for establishing a people’s democratic state which would then uphold civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. Three, we want to build a self-reliant and progressive economy which means dismantling the imperialist and feudal stranglehold on the Philippines’ economy and carrying out national industrialization and genuine land reform.
We also give a high premium to guaranteeing the people’s economic and social well-being, meaning the new social order that we would want to build would liberate people from poverty, raise their standards of living, attain full employment, have adequate and humane working and social conditions, better standards for health, education, and housing. Also, our vision is to promote a nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented people’s culture. Philippine culture right now is very colonial, patriarchal, and decadent so we would want to promote a culture that reflects the conditions of the Filipino people, promotes pride in the Philippines, and also promotes their participation in building a socialist country and also participate in the movement for national and social liberation.
We’d also uphold the right to self-determination of the moral people and other national minorities in the Philippines because we believe national minorities must be allowed to exercise their rights to own or control and utilize their ancestral lands. Also, fighting for women’s liberation by destroying the basis of national class and gender oppression, partake in building a strong anti-imperialist front in the world, meaning being able to work hand-in-hand with workers and other oppressed peoples. So yeah, that is the program of BAYAN. Very broad strokes and of course, a very big endeavor.
Ju-Hyun Park: That’s certainly a huge undertaking and all power to you and BAYAN for the work you have ahead and for your leadership in combating APEC and the general trend of US imperialism across the Pacific region. As we close out, how can our audience stay in touch with you?
Nina Macapinlac: Yes. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, it’s BAYAN-USA on all of those platforms. I would say those are the best ways to stay in touch. We also have a website, bayanusa.org, that you can check out.
Ju-Hyun Park: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today, Nina. Before we close out, I would like to also extend my thanks to our staff behind the scenes helping make everything possible. That’s David Hebden and Adam Coley. And thank you so much again to our listeners and our readers out there. This is The Real News signing off. Stay in the streets, stay in the struggle. Thanks for listening.
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