US senator urges new approach to Asia trade policy

United States - WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - The United States must rethink its trade policy toward China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region and adopt new models for negotiating trade deals, a senior Democratic senator said on Friday.

"We must develop a trade policy for the Asia-Pacific region as a whole," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said in the text of a speech in Seattle to the National Center for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

The group works with the U.S. government on trade policy in the APEC region.

"Too often, China has been treated as a proxy for Asia," said Baucus, whose committee has responsibility for crafting and enacting trade legislation.

President George W. Bush, who will attend his last APEC summit meeting in Peru in November, has been criticized for focusing too much on security concerns within APEC at the expense of the forum's original emphasis on boosting regional trade, investment and development.

The 21-member group accounts for 60 percent of world economic output and brings together leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and other countries in North America, South America and Asia for annual talks.

Baucus called for a "reinvigorated APEC, one with a clear mission to expand trade between member economies."

The next U.S. administration should pursue a variety of trade pacts within the region, starting with one to liberalize just trade in services with Japan, Baucus said.

That would be break from the broader free trade agreement model followed by the Bush administration. However a pact that includes agriculture would be politically difficult for Tokyo and one that includes autos could be hard for Washington.

Baucus also urged stitching together existing free trade pacts with Chile, Singapore, Australia and South Korea into a regional accord and then expanding it to others like Malaysia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam.

He did not mention that Congress has yet to approve the South Korean agreement because many Democrats say its auto provisions favor South Korea too much.

Washington also should cut duties on goods from the poorest countries in the region, such as Cambodia, Baucus said.

The United States collects as much duties on $2 billion worth of imports from Cambodia as it does on $57 billion worth of imports from Britain, he said.

Much of Cambodia's exports are in sectors, such as clothing, where the United States has its highest tariffs. (Editing by Xavier Briand)