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Welcome to Howstreet.com radio, the online source for market opinions.

Here is Jim Goddard.

My guest is James Corbett, publisher of the corbettReport.com, an editorial writer for the international forecaster.

He's speaking to us from Japan, where he's worked and lived since 2004.

Welcome back to the show, James.

Thank you for having me back on.

The APEC Summit in Vietnam.

Is this being billed as a big deal?

It is, to some extent.

It's probably not world-shaking, but there are some things that are being hatched at the

APIC conference that could potentially in the long run be world-shaking, probably the most

notable of which is this story coming out from the Russian TAS news agency right now that

Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow supports the idea of

setting up a free trade area in Asia and the Pacific.

And basically, he went on to point out that in the last few years, Russia's foreign trade

with the APEC countries has increased from 23 to 31 percent of Russia's overall trade,

and it exports to APEC countries has increased from 17 to 31% of Russia's overall trade, and its exports to APEC countries

has increased from 17 to 24% of its overall trade, and he says we have no intention of stopping

there. So I think this is an indication that Russia is taking its Asia trading partners more

seriously and looking to the Asia-Pacific region as an important outlet

for exports as basically Asia starts to build up, largely with the help, of course, of China

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