Further Progress Reported At TPP Talks

by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York

29 June 2011

A statement from the Office of the United States Trade Representative has disclosed that the nine countries involved in negotiating the extended Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – the United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei – have successfully concluded the seventh round of their negotiations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

It was reported that the negotiators are making further step-by-step progress toward their goal of reaching the outlines of an agreement by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ meeting in November this year.

As at the previous round in Singapore, the TPP countries extended the length of the round in Vietnam to ensure the teams had sufficient time to make meaningful progress in all areas of the negotiation. The additional time was held to have been helpful in achieving good progress in further developing the detailed legal texts of the agreement.

During the week of talks, the countries reviewed new proposals, including those on intellectual property, transparency, telecommunications, customs and the environment; while advanced their efforts to consolidate the various proposals that the countries put forward in previous rounds.

Among the issues on which the teams were said to have had particularly productive discussions were the new cross-cutting issues that will feature for the first time in the TPP. After consulting internally on the US text tabled at the sixth round, they furthered their efforts to find common ground on the regulatory coherence text intended to make the regulatory systems of their countries operate in a more consistent and seamless manner and avoid the types of regulatory barriers that are increasingly among the key obstacles to trade.

The nine teams also furthered their work on the accompanying commitments on access to each other’s markets for goods, services, government procurement and product-specific rule of origin. They also discussed their respective tariff requests and offers on industrial goods, agriculture and textiles, working to close gaps in their positions.

It was emphasized that the nine teams reviewed in detail each country’s tariff offers and possible approaches to achieving their common goals of producing the most ambitious package possible, supporting the creation and retention of jobs, and promoting regional integration.

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