The deal is expected to cover about 40 percent of the global economy.
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A spokesman for Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said their team had made progress on sugar and dairy during the talks in Hawaii, but discussions were yet to be finalised.
While the ministers of the 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) acknowledged they are still far apart on certain issues such as dairy, there were some areas of agreement in this week’s negotiation in Hawaii, they said.
University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey, a long-time advocate of transparency around the secret talks, said Friday that the group of interested parties had lodged an urgent application for a judicial review of Trade Minister Tim Groser’s “blanket refusal” to release information she officially requested in January.
“At the conclusion of negotiations we will consider whether our constituents and country are better off with, or without, an agreement”, the lawmakers wrote U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.
They haven’t yet set a date for future talks.
Japan’s economic and fiscal policy minister, Akira Amari, said he thought a deal would be reached with one more meeting.
Agriculture is one of the final sticking points – which participants describe as a normal phenomenon in trade negotiations, given the political sensitivity around farming and food.
U.S.-Japan auto and rice negotiations also remained up in the air. Farmers were disappointed by the outcome but said it was important to get a good deal.
“The calendar is never your friend”, Susan Schwab, President George W. Bush’s trade negotiator, said earlier in the week.
“There are countries already waiting to join”. It is truly shameful that tobacco companies are hiding behind tobacco growers to disguise their own wrongful and abusive behavior.
“If I can be accused of anything, it’s putting myself to the front to really push the interests of my country”, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said, when asked about rumors that his country’s position on the matter is holding up the entire agreement.
Ministers and negotiators leave Hawaii committed to build on the momentum of this meeting by staying in close contact as negotiators continue their intensive engagement to find common ground. Since Fast Track’s passage, a series of letters have been sent by U.S. representatives and senatorsinsisting that the TPP include enforceable disciplines against currency cheating in its core text.
The TPP must protect public health measures relating to tobacco from being challenged under the agreement, specifically under a legal mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that allows foreign companies to sue governments in worldwide trade tribunals.
The US, Japan, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru are taking part in the talks.
Dairy products represent 20 per cent of New Zealand’s exports and open access to the 11 other TPP countries could be a huge economic benefit.
In Australia, several voices in parliament are raising concerns about the potential impact on the national sugar industry.
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A TPP agreement is key to Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, aimed at anchoring the United States firmly in a region increasingly dominated by China and also at raising labor and environmental standards in nations scattered around the Asia-Pacific region. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
