Sectoral FTAs more likely – Romualdez

Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Romualdez believes that the Philippines will have more success in securing “sectoral FTAs” than to continue aiming for a broader free trade agreement with the US. One possible form of a sectoral FTA could be a critical minerals agreement that the Philippines and the US are currently working on.

This assessment of a Philippine-US FTA was made by Amb. Romualdez and former US Ambassador to the Philippines John Negroponte during a press briefing held last week as part of the recent US-Philippine Society meeting at Manila Peninsula in Makati.

Amb. Romualdez acknowledged that while the country has been pushing for an FTA for “quite some time now, unfortunately, the way we see it and the way we assess it, the United States is not prepared do an individual free trade agreement. They are doing more of their Indo-Pacific Economic Framework as the vehicle that they’ll likely use, especially in the ASEAN region...In other words they’ll likely do the general type of thing between the ASEAN countries.”

Romualdez said that the Philippines was one of the first to sign up to join the IPEF and a conference is scheduled to take place around May where there will be discussions on the framework. As such, he admitted, a Philippine-US FTA “...will be quite difficult at this time to have ...more maybe on the sectoral side, in other words, each business sector we may be able to have some form of free trade.”

He continued that on the “critical minerals, that is one of the many things we are working with the United States because we would like to be able to export many of our critical minerals, certainly nickel, but we do not have processing plants here. Our nickel, perhaps one of the best grade, and unfortunately we do not have the capacity to process it to be able to export it to the United States. That is one of those we are pushing... also for us to be able to set up processing plants here, but processing plants needs a lot of energy. And so, that is a problem we have to solve through...between energy and the processing ...that’s a major setback.”

Romualdez’s sentiment on a Philippine-US FTA was bolstered by Amb. Negroponte, pointing out that a free trade agreement has become a “bad word” in the US lexicon for now and into the foreseeable future.

The US-Philippine Society is a non-profit, private sector organization that helps push forward the Philippines’ interest in Washington D.C. It held last week a series of meetings and dialogues with Philippine economic managers and military leaders, as well representatives of the private sector spanning various industries from banking and finance, energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, mining and manufacturing, specifically semiconductors.

According to Amb. Negroponte, in response to questions about the Philippines’ continued desire to secure an FTA with the United States, “the disposition toward a free trade agreement is not as good as it was in years past... it became a bad word in our political lexicon, which is an unfortunate thing.”

 He expressed the view that although an FTA is based on the positive theory of comparative advantage, “it is not the current philosophy of our current US Trade Representative,” expressing hope that “ maybe some kind of correction over time, but not seeing any breakthrough in the foreseeable future.”

Sir James

Negroponte, along with another former US Ambassador to the Philippines, Tomas Hubbard (who is one of the original founders of the Society), Amb. Romualdez, and new Philippine co-chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala facilitated the four-day meeting and discussions.

JAZA, however, was not able to attend the press briefing last week as he had a conflicting TV interview with CNBC that same morning.

Romualdez has baptized JAZA with a new name, addressing him as “Sir James” to differentiate JAZA from his father “Don Jaime.”

The Philippine envoy also revealed that industrialist Manny Pangilinan was also invited to co chair the Society this year, but MVP had to beg off and opted to just be a board member as he has several business matters to attend to.

Although he was not able to join the press briefing, JAZA arrived before the lunch meeting with members of the business community, and I was thus able to pop off a quick question on his conversion to a cat daddy.

JAZA recalls that he and wife Lizzie used to walk in the morning when they temporarily resided in South Forbes and they would encounter GSIS president and general manager Jose Arnulfo “Wick” Veloso walking his dogs, Thor and Loki.

During those walks, they would encounter stray cats, some of which Lizzie adopted. As of his latest count, JAZA and Lizzie now have eight cats. He admits that he was not particularly fond of dogs or cats, but one cat, which his family named Garfield, he has gotten quite fond of.

Surprisingly enough, another unexpected convert to cats is former BSP Governor and now SM Investments Corp. chairman Amando “Say” Tetangco. Say has gotten attached to one of the strays adopted by his lawyer daughter, Mia, named Sunshine because she follows him around the house.

On the other hand, Say admits, he is not partial to dogs. In fact, he admits a slight fear of his wife Elma’s Belgian Malinois, who really belongs to daughter Mia and who has the moniker “SC” which stands for Supreme Court, Mia being a lawyer.