Pacific Rim, term used to describe the nations bordering the Pacific Ocean and the island countries situated in it. In the post–World War II era, the Pacific Rim has become an increasingly important and interconnected economic region. The economic growth of the west coast of the United States has coincided with Japan's emergence as an economic superpower and with the rise of highly developed industrial economies in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong are all world financial centers. Twenty-one Pacific Rim states, including the United States and Canada, are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which was established in 1989 to provide a forum for discussion on a broad range of economic issues, to encourage economic cooperation, and to promote trade among the market-oriented economies of the region. A permanent secretariat was established in Singapore in 1993. In the 1994 Bogor (Indonesia) Declaration APEC members agreed to establish a free-trade zone over a 26-year period. Twelve Pacific Rim nations, including the United States, signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement to reduce or eliminate many tariffs and to set common standards on a number of trade-related issues, in 2016, but political criticism of the TPP in the United States subsequently made U.S. ratification unlikely, and President Trump withdrew (2017) from the agreement. The remaining 11 parties to the TPP signed (2018) a renegotiated Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which took effect at the end of 2018.
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