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Key Takeaways:

• APEC 2025 will struggle for policy relevance: The political and economic policy importance of APEC 2025 faces stiff challenges. South Korea’s ongoing political upheaval could leave the host country rudderless through much of the calendar year. President Yoon Suk-yeol chose the small city of Gyeongju to host the Leaders Week, creating significant logistical hurdles. Most importantly, APEC 2025 will occur in an era presenting unprecedented challenges to the organization’s long-term aspirations for trade and investment liberalization.
• Nevertheless, Leaders, Ministers, and Senior Officials will gather throughout the year to pursue Seoul’s chosen themes of “Connect, Innovate, Prosper:” The APEC 2025 calendar features six ministerial meetings and seven other senior meetings and high-level dialogues in the lead up to the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, aimed at developing practical initiatives advancing regional digitization, AI, the clean energy transition, and inclusive and sustainable growth.
• Significant Opportunities for Business Engagement: As a platform that uniquely guarantees private sector stakeholder access to a breadth of leaders, ministers, and senior officials, APEC provides corporations with strong opportunities for high-level engagement. In addition to established channels of the APEC CEO Summit and the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), corporations can organize and attend side events, explore public-private partnerships to advance APEC initiatives, and seek bilateral meetings with leaders, ministers, and senior officials.