Negotiations to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will resume in Atlanta Georgia today, October 1. If completed, the TPP would form the world’s largest free trade region.
TPP members make up about 40% of the global economy — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.
The trade ministers’ meeting follows four days of discussions between their main negotiators, but it was not clear how much progress they had made on the most difficult issues.
The negotiations have covered governments’ protection of state-owned enterprises, setting up extraterritorial tribunals to settle disputes between governments and foreign investors, the use of capital controls in a country’s financial system, and others.
Among key issues still about the opening of US, Japanese and Canadian markets to New Zealand and Australian dairy product exports; US barriers to sugar imports; and US barriers on auto parts imports from outside the US-Canada-Mexico NAFTA free-trade region.
Japanese automakers would benefit if the US part barriers are lowered, but Mexico and Canada disagree.
Details of the talks are still kept secret from the public, inciting protests from civil society groups who, citing some leaked preliminary texts, say they are likely to help businesses while hurting ordinary people.
The US hopes to lock in rules on trade and intellectual property protection that China would have to follow. However, China already begun planning its own Asian trade agreement, which could replace TPP is doesn’t take shape.