The agreement on foreign exchange, an adjunct to the TPP pact completed after marathon negotiations last month, was pushed by Washington, where many legislators had said they would not ratify a trade deal that did not have currency provisions.
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“If you’re an autoworker in Michigan, the cars you build face taxes as high as 70% in Vietnam”, the president wrote, adding, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership will change that”. “And if we don’t pass this agreement – if America doesn’t write those rules – then countries like China will”, Obama said.
Obama said the TPP does not only lower trade barriers but establishes rules for treatment of workers and environmental protection.
2016 Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) issued a statement in which he vowed to do everything he can to defeat the TPP, saying we need trade agreements work for working families, not big corporations.
The US government began the legal process on Thursday to bring a sweeping Pacific free trade pact into force, with President Barack Obama notifying lawmakers of his plan to sign the U.S.-led initiative. ITI will also be assessing the document based on localization measures that push for protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights including accountability and regulatory transparency in all parties involved under TPP.
Political analysts note that China has proposed its own 16-nation free-trade area (including India) that would be the world’s largest trade group totaling 3.4 billion people.
However, a leading critic of the deal, Auckland University Law Professor Jane Kelsey, said the TPP was set to become “fodder for the USA election cycle” as February 5 next year would be the earliest Obama could sign.
The release of the bulky text of the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement – it has 30 chapters and numerous annexure and related instruments – has triggered a fresh round of domestic debate in the US on how it would impact the country.
Malaysia will have to implement reforms to combat human trafficking, and Vietnam will have to allow independent labor unions before they can reap benefits of the pact.
“Because Korea and Japan compete in similar sectors, the TPP will put Japan at a great advantage”.
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Government officials have said agreement would be accompanied by a series of side deals for Canada.
