HANOI, Vietnam —September 10, 2014 — Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) chief negotiators completed 10 days of intensive meetings today, making important progress across a range of issues as they continue their drive toward a comprehensive, high-standard agreement.
“We have committed to a focused work plan, which will allow us to boost momentum and make continued progress,” said Barbara Weisel, U.S. Chief Negotiator for TPP. “All countries involved want to reach a conclusion to unlock the enormous opportunity TPP represents.”
Through the TPP, the United States is working to establish a trade and investment framework in the dynamic Asia-Pacific region that supports U.S. job creation by expanding trade, which accounted for about a third of U.S. economic growth in the past five years.
The United States is also taking steps to establish innovative rules that promote core U.S. values in the agreement, such as transparency and good governance and strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards.
During the session in Hanoi, Vietnam, the United States and its TPP partners – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam – successfully resolved many issues and narrowed gaps in other areas. The teams made important progress on State-owned enterprises, intellectual property, investment, rules of origin, transparency and anti-corruption, and labor. They also continued to move forward with their work to construct ambitious packages for preferential access to each other’s markets for goods, services/investment, financial services, and government procurement.
Having reduced the number of outstanding issues, the United States and the other 11 TPP countries share a commitment to resolve the remaining issues as quickly as possible, including both on the text and market access packages.
To advance this work, Ambassador Michael Froman will work bilaterally with many of his TPP counterparts in the coming weeks. Next week, he will meet with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Ninh in Washington, D.C. and other meetings with TPP ministers are expected to follow.
Posted September 17, 2014
Source: USTR
