President Obama, in Beijing for two key APEC summits, said Monday that the U.S. and China have agreed to increase the number of short-term tourist and business visas as part of an arrangement aimed at injecting billions of dollars into their respective economies and improving trade, investment and business ties.
Obama also said progress was being made on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks.
The reciprocal agreement between the U.S. and China increases short-term tourist and business visas to 10 years from one year — the longest possible “validity” under U.S. law — and expands the length of student and exchange visas to five years from one year. The U.S. said it will begin to issue visas under the new agreement on Wednesday.
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“During my visit, the United States and China have agreed to implement a new arrangement for visas that will benefit everyone from students to tourists to businesses large and small,” Obama said in remarks at the APEC CEO summit. “Now, of course, that will be good for the businessmen who are going back and forth all the time. But keep in mind, last year 1.8 million Chinese visitors to the United States contributed $21 billion to our economy and supported more than 100,000 American jobs. This agreement could help us more than quadruple those numbers.”
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The White House said in a fact sheet that China is the fastest-growing outbound tourism market in the world, with Chinese travelers ranking the U.S. as their “most desired” travel destination. Despite that growth, only 2 percent of Chinese travelers come to the U.S., the White House said. Administration officials project that a new competitive visa policy will attract as many as 7.3 million Chinese travelers to the U.S. by 2021, contributing nearly $85 billion a year to the economy and supporting 440,000 U.S. jobs.
“I’ve heard from American business leaders about how valuable this step will be and we’ve worked hard to achieve this outcome because it clearly serves the mutual interest of both of our countries,” Obama said. “So I’m proud that during my visit to China we will mark this important breakthrough, which will benefit our economies and bring our people together, and I’m pleased that President Xi [Jinping] has been a partner in getting this done — very much appreciate his work on this.”
Matthew Shay, president and chief executive officer of the National Retail Federation, said, “We applaud the administration for moving to reduce travel restraints on international shoppers and tourists. For the last three years, NRF and our partners in the Discover America Partnership have been advocating significant reforms to our visa policy, and we are happy to see progress on the National Travel and Tourism Strategy.”
Shay said the agreement “will help make the United States a first-rate destination for Chinese visitors, increase cultural and economic exchange between the world’s two largest economies, and produce tangible economic benefits for American businesses and workers, especially those in the hospitality, retail and tourism sectors,” adding that “encouraging more international shoppers to visit the United States to eat at our restaurants, sleep at our hotels and shop in our stores is a retail industry priority.”
Obama also participated in informal discussions with leaders on the TPP negotiations between the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The TPP leaders issued a joint statement on Monday in Beijing stating they have made “significant progress” in recent months and have also narrowed the remaining gaps on the legal text of the agreement.
“With the end coming into focus, we have instructed our ministers and negotiators to make concluding this agreement a top priority so that our businesses, workers, farmers and consumers can start to reap the real and substantial benefits of the TPP agreement as soon as possible,” the leaders said.
Obama said, “What we are seeing is momentum building around a Trans-Pacific Partnership that can spur greater economic growth, spur greater jobs growth, set high standards for trade and investment throughout the Asia Pacific…During the past few weeks, our teams have made good progress in resolving several outstanding issues regarding a potential agreement. Today is an opportunity at the political level for us to break some remaining logjams.”