The U.S. APEC 2023 Host Year Elevated Stakeholder Voices

On November 17, the United States successfully concluded its 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) host year.  Starting in Honolulu late last year, we visited Palm Springs, California, a crossroads of the Americas and Asia, in February to advance resilient and sustainable growth.  We then moved on to Detroit in May, where we saw the Motor City being revitalized as a center of innovative and worker-centered transportation and auto industries, and in August we gathered in Seattle, a global gateway of trade, investment, and innovation for the Pacific Northwest.  We completed our fruitful journey in San Francisco last month.   

So, what did we accomplish during our host year?  For starters, the United States proudly hosted 400 technical meetings, 10 ministerial meetings, and over 5,000 delegates from the public and private sectors across the Asia-Pacific region.  APEC 2023 outcomes included announcements of $200 billion of investments from companies in the Asia Pacific into the United States and $50 billion of U.S. private sector investments into APEC economies.  We also directly engaged with more than 12,000 stakeholders and nearly 2,500 press members, and most importantly, APEC Economic Leaders endorsed the Golden Gate Declaration to advance the 21 APEC economies’ important work on sustainability, resilience, and economic inclusion.  

Our success this year would not be possible without the engagement of each of our stakeholders and many Americans across the country who showed incredible support for APEC 2023.   

Spirit of APEC Connect in the Leaders’ Declaration

At the beginning of our host year, we took domestic outreach efforts to the next level by launching “APEC Connect,” a nation-wide campaign explaining our U.S. APEC 2023 host year to the American public.  Through this program, we engaged stakeholders from diverse sectors, from trade associations and chambers of commerce to labor groups, Indigenous communities, and diaspora communities across nearly all corners of the country. 

APEC Connect generated public awareness and broad support for our host year and cultivated partnerships to ensure all Americans can play a part in the APEC process.  The program further helped ensure that APEC’s work on sustainability, resiliency, and economic inclusion benefits people across the Asia-Pacific region. 

Traveling across the United States beyond U.S. APEC host cities – including to Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Rockville, and Chicago – we learned about economic opportunities and policy outcomes Americans would like to see from APEC to improve their personal and their community’s livelihoods.  It strengthened our stakeholder relations and inclusive approach to make better and more informed decisions about our host year policy priorities.  

Much of this was captured in the Golden Gate Declaration, which stated, “Our stakeholders and business communities bring creativity, dynamism, and energy and remain vital partners in our work.  We look forward to further strengthening multi-stakeholder engagement.”  

APEC Connect Efforts Enhanced in San Francisco

In San Francisco, our last destination, the voices we gathered from across the United States through APEC Connect were incorporated into our final efforts to build a better tomorrow in the Asia-Pacific region.  

During APEC Economic Leaders’ Week (AELW), civic organizations and San Francisco APEC Host Committees hosted nearly 30 public and stakeholder engagement initiatives, conferences, and events to highlight San Francisco and California as the perfect AELW host and discuss how APEC can help people across the region thrive.  They included the APEC Meets California and Silicon Valley series, The Future Starts in California Conference, and more.  Over 3,000 domestic and international participants joined them.  

As APEC Connect ‘friends’ advised, we continued to prioritize women’s economic empowerment and a just transition to Net Zero carbon economies through the inaugural APEC Multistakeholder Forum.  We also met with experts from academia at the APEC University Leaders’ Forum and the APEC Study Centers Conference, and engaged with a range of dynamic youth groups.

AELW also featured the extensive public-private collaboration of nearly 2,000 participants at the APEC CEO Summit, the inaugural APEC Sustainable Future Forum, the APEC Business Advisory Council’s Dialogue with APEC Leaders, and other conversations.  This formal role for public-private cooperation – unique to APEC – is the “secret sauce” which helps us continue to deliver important outcomes for our workers, families, and businesses. 

Importantly, we also engaged with Small-and-Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in San Francisco and from other parts of the United States.  It was amazing to see that SMEs from different cities and states – Nevada, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Texas – that ‘APEC Connect’ed together earlier in the year were reunited in San Francisco as an integral part of AELW.  

The City of San Francisco empowered other important stakeholders and members of communities and dramatically expanded APEC’s public outreach.  They recruited 1,200 multilingual volunteers and more than 300 leaders and elected officials from the city and the State of California.  They also engaged around 400 local groups, including members of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community, who account for more than 30% of the city’s population and serve as connectors between San Francisco and the Asia-Pacific region.  They supported the successful execution of AELW, promoted AELW, provided opportunities for San Francisco and APEC delegates to interact, and distributed 40,000 copies of the city’s APEC flyer to neighborhoods.  The San Francisco media team reached more than 30,000 people via newsletters, their 600 advertisements received over 320,000 impressions, and their website attracted almost half a million visitors. 

Throughout the year, ‘APEC Connect’ed true champions of regional economic engagement to each other, to the U.S. host team, and to the Asia-Pacific.  The champions are all 12,000 stakeholders APEC 2023 engaged directly with – and more importantly, American workers, families, and businesses.  They all played a pivotal role in ‘Creating a Sustainable and Resilient Future for All’ and building an interconnected, innovative, and inclusive APEC region which benefits all our communities.