Japan’s Amari: TPP member nations clash over intellectual property issue

With the fate of that trade pact still in doubt, individuals and groups invested in seeing the deal through urged continued effort, while looking out for U.S. interests.

“The sad thing is, 98 percent is concluded”, chipped in Australia’s Trade Minister Andrew Robb, saying the “big four” economies of the United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico is the core problem.

The negotiators were “more confident than ever that the TPP is within reach”, he said, and the Pacific Rim countries would continue to have bilateral discussions to iron out their differences.

Many countries, including China, have begun to study the implications of the TPP for their economies, “both potential advantages of being a member in the future and also the challenges they would face in terms of meeting the high standards”, said Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson Institute for worldwide Economics. That in part was due to a dispute causing a flare up between North America and Japan over autos, New Zealand digging in over the dairy trade and no agreement being reached on next generation drugs or monopoly periods.

That trade authority would allow the U.S. president to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments, which is crucial for the swift congressional consideration of a TPP deal.

“But there may not be such a strong motivation for a trade pact with the European Union”.

Chile, with a new, left-of-center government and existing free trade agreements with each of the countries in the Pacific deal, including the United States, saw no reason to compromise, especially on its demand for a short window of protection for United States pharmaceutical giants.

The tariff-cutting TPP, if realized, will bind together some 40 percent of global output in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.

“This is why policymakers need to press ahead with negotiations on the…TPP, as well as on its transatlantic cousin, the TTIP”.

While nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, I would say we have taken provisional decisions on more than 90 per cent of issues.

The stalled agreement is a setback for United States President, Barack Obama, who hopes to seal a deal before the US is immersed in the 2016 presidential election. The dialogue may resume within weeks.

But several sticking points remain.

But US Trade Representative Michael Froman, in a statement on behalf of the 12 countries involved, insisted that “significant progress” had been made on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the most ambitious trade deal in decades.

As pointed out by Bill Carmichael, former chairman of Australia’s Industries Assistance Commission, the real benefit from such trade deals is the opening up of protected sectors to competition, “including those protected by ‘behind-the-border barriers”.

“The United States (which leads the TPP) is a close ally for Japan, so we have a political incentive to liberalize our sensitive farm products by breaking our back”, said one source.

The dispute pitted a Japanese desire to fully integrate the Asian supply networks of its automotive giants such as Toyota Motor Corp. into the TPP framework to create a huge value chain, as Amari put it in earlier remarks.

The ministers held their latest round of negotiations at a hotel on Maui’s Kaanapali Beach for four days this week. He said dairy – of which New Zealand is a major exporter – is one of these hard issues.

A mix of farmers and laborers kept up the pressure to leave intact Canada’s system for limiting imports and local output to raise prices. Obama has pointedly said that he favors the TPP because he does not want China to be setting lower standards.

Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said in March that the country is open to all the free trade arrangements that are beneficial to the world’s trade liberalization and regional economic integration, as long as they are open and transparent. Harper is likely to call new elections this week, raising doubts about whether Canada would be in a position to reach a deal after Maui.