Pacific Rim trade ministers failed to clinch a deal on Friday to free up trade between a dozen nations after a dispute flared up over auto trade between Japan and North America, New Zealand dug in over dairy trade and no agreement was reached on monopoly periods for next-generation drugs.
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Trade ministers from 12 countries are embroiled in a final round of talks in Hawaii right now, as they try to finalise an agreement.
The director of worldwide trade for Dairy Farmers of Canada Yves Leduc told Morning Report he had sympathy for New Zealand farmers hard-hit by the global downturn in milk prices.
“Canada came to Maui ready to conclude a TPP“.
“I view this type of pressure tactic as just more negotiating through the media, and we’ve been consistent in not engaging in that, preferring instead to sit down at the table in a more constructive manner”, Rick Roth wrote in an email.
Meanwhile, US trade representative Michael Froman said they had made “significant progress and we will continue to work on resolving a limited number of remaining issues“.
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.
“It is so small that it’s hard to take it seriously at this point”, Petersen said of an offer by Canada to unlock the door to its dairy market.
“The U.S. was on one side of the issue, while practically every other country were on the other side”, a source from a non-U.S. negotiation nation said.
One of the main concessions targeted by other countries at the table: reducing Canadian protectionism on dairy imports.
“It’s highly interdependent”, said Wolff, a former U.S. negotiator who now leads the American National Foreign Trade Council, a commercial association.
Ruiter is anxious Canada is on the verge of allowing foreign dairy into the country and diluting the now protected market. Japan has to take in some more dairy.
Dobson said Canada has to look to new markets beyond the U.S.
They could also be felt at ballot boxes around the world.
The talks, which drew about 650 negotiators, 150 journalists and hundreds of stakeholders, had been billed as the last chance to get a deal in time to pass the U.S. Congress this year, before 2016 presidential elections muddy the waters. So does Japan, where a drop in recent polls has left Prime Minister Shinzo Abe politically vulnerable.
“That’s the risk (with delays)”, said Wolff, who negotiated U.S. access to the Japanese market in the 1970s, helped draft early U.S. fast-track trade legislation, and worked on the landmark GATT treaty.
“This is a clear message to the Government of Canada”, said Wally Smith, President of Dairy Farmers of Canada.
But cracks in the Canadian government’s position have begun to show as an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership appears within reach. “We’ve been saying all along that Canada’s dairy system is worth keeping”.
However, the Harper government agreed to open the market slightly with the recent Canada-Europe free-trade deal, and had apparently made another overture this week.
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More than 80% of Canadians contacted said they didn’t mind paying more for milk produced in Canada because it doesn’t contain growth hormones.
