Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) chief negotiators completed 10 days of intensive meetings September 10, making progress across a range of issues as they continued their drive toward a comprehensive, high-standard agreement.
“We have committed to a focused work plan, which will allow us to boost momentum and make continued progress,” said Barbara Weisel, U.S. chief negotiator for TPP, according to a news release the same day from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). “All countries involved want to reach a conclusion to unlock the enormous opportunity TPP represents.”
Through the TPP, the United States is working to establish a trade and investment framework in the dynamic Asia-Pacific region, USTR said. The United States is also taking steps to establish innovative rules that promote core U.S. values in the agreement, such as transparency and good governance and strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards.
During the session in Hanoi, the United States and its TPP partners — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — resolved many issues and narrowed gaps in other areas, USTR said.
“The teams made important progress on state-owned enterprises, intellectual property, investment, rules of origin, transparency and anti-corruption, and labor,” the release said. They also continued to move forward with their work to construct ambitious packages for preferential access to each other’s markets for goods, services/investment, financial services and government procurement.
RESOLVING REMAINING ISSUES
Having reduced the number of outstanding issues, the United States and the other 11 TPP countries share a commitment to resolve the remaining issues as quickly as possible, USTR said, including both on the text and market-access packages. To advance this work, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman will work bilaterally with many of his TPP counterparts in the coming weeks.
During the week of September 15, Froman will meet with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Vũ Văn Ninh in Washington. Other meetings with TPP ministers are expected to follow.