Washingtonhas beenpushingBeijingto letthe yuan rise against thedollarandothercurrencies, in order, among other things, to helpreducethe U. S.tradedeficit.
"We are the party that increasingly represents the mainstream view in Britain, which is let's trade with Europe, let's be friendly with Europe but for goodness sake let's govern our own country".
What happened was, is a group, a subset of APEC countries came together and said let's see if we can create a high-standard agreement that is dealing with tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade, but let's also incorporate a whole range of new trade issues that are going to be coming up in the future -- innovation, regulatory convergence, how we're thinking about the Internet and intellectual property.
Since 2001 Australia's stock exchange has had a system in place called ASX World Link, which is intended to let Australian and U.S. investors trade selected stocks on each other's stock markets in their own currency.