Malaysia and Canada resist TPP deal
Resistance from a stubborn Canada and protectionist Malaysia is emerging as the biggest hurdle ahead of a crucial Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting starting in Hawaii on Tuesday.
Trade negotiators believe sealing a ministerial-level deal at the TPP on the island of Maui is critical, because further delays risk negotiations dragging the talks into the US election season where populist anti-free trade rhetoric could jeopardise any deal.
Trade sources say that an in-principle TPP deal at the Maui meeting would allow time for legal documents to be prepared for leaders like US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Tony Abbott to officially sign at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in the Philippines in November.
Australian trade minister Andrew Robb who’ll attend the meeting said negotiations were at a very advanced stage.
"We are pushing hard to ensure we can secure major gains and opportunities for Australian business and for economy," he said.
Matthew Goodman, a former economic adviser to President Obama and now an Asia Pacific adviser at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said trade ministers like US Trade Representative Mike Froman would make a concerted effort to "get an initial agreement done."
"I don’t think Froman would have called this meeting unless he thought he had a good shot," said Mr Goodman, who has been speaking to government officials from the countries involved in the talks.
The TPP is a proposed accord that would cover more than 40 per cent of the world’s economy and set sweeping new rules for trade, investment, intellectual property, state-owned enterprises, labour and the environment.
The 12 TPP countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.
Notably, it excludes China, which was unable to meet the rules seeking to level the playing field for private companies against favoured state-owned enterprises.
The TPP is central to the Obama administration’s "rebalance" to Asia. The President has championed the mooted deal at home as a way for the US to set the economic rules in the region, to trump emerging rival China.
http://www.bilaterals.org/?malaysia-and-canada-resist-tpp&lang=en
