Robb confident TPP will pass Congress

Australia and other countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Thursday night released documents relating to the historic deal covering 40 per cent of the global economy.

Under a trade law passed earlier this year, President Obama must give the public time to review the text before he signs the agreement and turns it over to Congress for approval.

“We have an additional prospect that the USA will come back and say it won’t bring the agreement into force with New Zealand until New Zealand has changed our laws and policies to the U.S. understanding of what’s required”.

US President Barack Obama is legally required to let the public read the deal for a minimum of 60 days before signing it. He also must alert the US Congress 90 days before he intends to sign it.

“The TPP means that America will write the rules of the road in the 21st century…”

The TPP will generate export opportunities, help create jobs in the United States, and help American consumers save money while offering them more choices, Obama said in the letter.

Activists bashed it for having few teeth to enforce labor rights and environmental protections, while giving drug companies patent protections that would deny poor people access to vital drugs. China has responded with its own proposed 16-nation free-trade area, including India, that would be the world’s biggest such bloc, encompassing 3.4 billion people. “And we do not rubber-stamp anything around here, let alone trade agreements”, he said.

“This has been negotiated over many years”.

The agreement has put Obama at odds with a few of his Democratic colleagues, including presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

The powerful new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, reserved judgement until after he has reviewed the document’s 30 chapters.

“Sanders wrote, “(I)t is even worse than I thought. “I continue to reserve judgment on the path ahead”, he said, adding that he remains hopeful about the pact.

The Government says the TPP deal will eliminate 98 per cent of all tariffs on everything from food to manufactured goods, resources and energy.

In a joint statement, central bank governor Graeme Wheeler and Treasury secretary Gabriel Makhlouf welcomed a declaration by the 12 monetary authorities, whose principal objective was to avoid unfair currency practices before passing legislation empowering the TPP.

The deal also sets a local sourcing threshold of 35 to 45 percent for individually-traded auto parts.

There was little immediate reaction from Asia.

“We do believe in trade”.

He said the deal still had to be approved by the twelve governments, from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, but was confident there would be no issues, hinting that it could be enacted as early as next year.

Malaysia must fully implement reforms to allow victims of human trafficking to travel, work and live outside government shelters and remove long-standing restrictions on unions and strikes, the summary of the text showed.

But the deal does not include measures demanded by a few USA lawmakers to punish currency manipulation with trade sanctions, disappointing carmaker Ford Motor Co, although members pledged not to deliberately weaken their currencies.

“The hardworking families of the AFL-CIO will join with our allies to defeat the TPP”, he said in a statement.