Citi Remarks by CEO Jane Fraser at APEC 2025 in Korea

(中央社財經訊息服務20251105 11:48:11)Highlights
• Citi CEO Jane Fraser delivered a keynote address at the APEC 2025 CEO Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea.
• Fraser stated that globalization isn’t vanishing; it’s changing. Growth is becoming more balanced, more digital and more distributed.
• The APEC economies are an interconnected engine of growth, together accounting for 61% of global GDP and over half of global trade. U.S.-Asia trade remains one of the fastest growing corridors for Citi’s clients.

The full speech is as follows:

Your Excellencies and distinguished guests: Good afternoon. It is an honor to be here representing Citigroup, and to thank our hosts in Gyeongju for bringing us together.

For Citi, the location for this year’s APEC meetings carries special meaning. We opened our first branch in Seoul in early 1967, making Citi the first foreign bank in Korea. Since then, we’ve stood with our clients here through every transformation in the regional and global economy. And whilst it’s a privilege to speak in Korea, today’s story is far bigger than any one country.

At Citi, we see the APEC economies as an interconnected engine of global progress — spanning Asia, the Americas and the Pacific. What happens here doesn’t stay here; it shapes how the world grows, trades and connects.

Globalization isn’t vanishing; it’s changing. Growth is becoming more balanced, more digital and more distributed. The APEC economies sit at the center of that change — together accounting for 61% of global GDP and over half of global trade.

Since I last addressed APEC in 2023, we’ve seen a shift from reaction to reinvention. Back then, clients were reacting to shocks. Now, they’re investing for the long term — redesigning supply chains, digitizing operations and embedding resilience.

Three themes define how this rewiring is taking shape. First, resilience — the ability to adjust and keep moving through uncertainty. Second, innovation — new technologies and energy systems reshaping how we live and work. And third, broad-based growth — ensuring the benefits of progress reach more people, more sectors and more places.

Together, these three forces are turning APEC into a unified driver of global progress.

Let’s begin with resilience. Across APEC, resilience means more than endurance. It’s the capacity to flex, adapt and grow through disruption.

We see it in Citi’s transaction data: trade volumes and payments moving steadily across a more diverse mix of routes. Supply chains becoming multi-hub networks instead of single corridors.

This is resilience in action — from advanced manufacturing in the U.S. and Mexico to energy and logistics in Canada to semiconductors in Korea and electronics in Malaysia.

U.S.-Asia trade remains one of the fastest growing corridors for our clients. And across those flows, we’re helping them find efficiencies so tariff and transport costs don’t reach consumers.

That same spirit of adaptability is shaping the rest of the region. Korea’s evolution from agriculture to advanced technology tells that story — with Samsung, LG, Hyundai and SK now operating in more than 70 markets. So does Vietnam’s emergence as a manufacturing powerhouse. And Indonesia’s rise in energy and minerals. And Australia’s role in critical raw materials.

Across the APEC economies, resilience has become a shared advantage. And we’ve seen that resilience take shape in real time. Recent bilateral agreements between the U.S. and China, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia are practical steps toward strengthening trade stability and regional connectivity. They’re reminders that cooperation remains the foundation of resilience, even when competition is part of the equation.

If resilience is the foundation, then innovation is the engine.

The next industrial era is taking shape across the APEC economies — powered by technology, clean energy and digital connectivity.

Since 2020, more than $200 billion in private capital has flowed into frontier technologies across APEC. Generative AI alone accounts for over half of that, whilst investments in robotics and decentralized finance are accelerating rapidly. The U.S. remains the world’s largest investor in AI — about $109 billion last year — while economies throughout Asia are driving application and scale.

Together, APEC economies are forming a dynamic innovation loop: pairing North American R&D and venture capital with Asia’s manufacturing depth and speed. That partnership is delivering breakthroughs that benefit the world.

Clean-energy investment tells a similar story. Energy-transition spending across APEC now averages two percent to three percent of GDP annually. Central to this effort is China, the leader in EV and battery exports. Korea and the U.S. are expanding next-generation semiconductors and energy storage. And Japan and Australia are advancing hydrogen and carbon-capture.

In Thailand, we see this transition vividly: new EV supply chains are emerging alongside traditional ones. Chinese EV manufacturers are building in parallel with Japanese firms long anchored in internal-combustion engines.

Digital infrastructure is the connective tissue. Data centers are rising in Singapore and Malaysia. Fintech platforms are scaling in the Philippines, Chile and Mexico. And Citi’s own digital networks are ensuring that capital moves as efficiently as ideas.

In many ways, APEC is where the future is being built — one network, one innovation, one connection at a time.

Finally, broad-based growth. For globalization to endure, growth must be widely shared.

Asia’s rising middle class will represent two-thirds of global consumers by 2030. That will create new markets for U.S. exports and expand opportunity for emerging economies. Manufacturing excellence in the APEC economies is now being matched by the expanding services trade — in finance, technology, education, entertainment. Digital services alone have grown by more than three percentage points of exports since 2012.

This is where APEC can lead: pairing world-class innovation and capital with deep production capability and a youthful consumer base across Asia and the Pacific.

At Citi, we see that growth in real time. Half of our new trade-finance clients in Asia are small- and medium-sized enterprises. We’re helping women entrepreneurs access working capital. We’re financing sustainable infrastructure so smaller firms can compete globally. Because when more people and more places participate in the economy, opportunity expands and the foundations of growth become stronger.

Standing here in Gyeongju, it’s impossible not to feel the weight of history and speed of change. Centuries ago, artisans in the Silla Dynasty crafted treasures that defined an era. Today, engineers in this region — and across the Americas — are building technologies that will define the next.

The economies of APEC are not on parallel tracks. They’re interconnected engines of global progress. Each depends on the other — for markets, capital, innovation, stability.

At Citi, we’ve witnessed that interdependence for more than 120 years in this region. We came to Asia to help companies grow. Today we’re helping firms across the region expand globally. In recent months, APEC members have announced hundreds of billions in planned investments in the U.S. — a powerful signal of confidence in American enterprise and in the ties that bind this community together. Citi is proud to play a role in enabling that growth, linking capital with ideas, and ambition with opportunity.

Because in the end, the true direction of globalization isn’t east or west. It’s forward. And the future will belong to those who build it together.

Thank you.