U.S. President Barack Obama repeated his call for re-balancing international trade in advance of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
"There's no need to view trade, commerce or economic growth as zero-sum games, where one country always has to prosper at the expense of another," Obama said, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported Saturday.
Leaders of 21 countries are expected to attend the summit, which convened in Yokohama, Japan, Saturday.
Earlier this week, foreign ministers and trade ministers of the APEC countries broadly agreed to work to avoid protectionist trade barriers.
At the recently concluded Group of 20 summit in Seoul, leaders agreed to pursue the topic of trade imbalances, asking the International Monetary Fund
to study the issue.