US Puts Green Issues Within TPP Negotiations

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

08 December 2011

In a prepared statement, the Deputy United States Trade Representative, Demetrios Marantis, has introduced a ‘green paper’ on how environmental initiatives are being forwarded within the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

The countries negotiating the proposed extension to the TPP - Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam - have called it “a comprehensive, next-generation regional agreement that liberalizes trade and investment and addresses new and traditional trade issues and 21st-century challenges”.

It is said that the TPP will cover "core" issues traditionally included in trade agreements, such as the elimination of tariffs and other barriers to goods and services trade and investment, as well as rules on intellectual property, technical barriers to trade, labour and the environment.

Marantis confirmed that “trade agreements are part of the solution to pressing international environmental challenges,” and that, consequently, the US is “assimilating environmental priorities more directly and aggressively into our trade policies,” and incorporating set of policy goals into the TPP. It is believed, for example, that the TPP partners can include, as an integral part of their strategy, a coordinated response to harmful illegal wildlife and wild plant trade.

While pointing out that the existing free trade agreement with Peru, and the Colombia, South Korea, and Panama agreements just passed by the US Congress, already include strong environmental provisions (although these were major sticking points in the convoluted US ratification process), he also included the recent commitment from the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member countries to reduce applied tariffs on environmental goods to 5% or less by 2015. They also agreed to eliminate non-tariff barriers such as local content requirements.

“In the TPP,” he added, “we are seeking to go even further. We believe all nine countries, and other eventual partners, can agree to eliminate all tariffs on environmental goods.”

He concluded that he was “exceedingly proud” of the ‘green paper’ that US released on December 5. It provides more details on the proposals for a TPP conservation framework.

He concluded that he was “convinced that the TPP is a truly unique opportunity – perhaps the best we’ve ever had in international trade negotiations – to finally show that trade and environment policies can be compatible, but that the world is better off both economically and environmentally when they are. The increased trade and the economic growth it can bring can become a starting point – not a sticking point – for innovative environmental policy.”

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