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A December 11, 2012, press release from the US Trade Representative (USTR) said that Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators were pleased to report further solid steps forward in closing the remaining gaps between them during the 15th round of negotiations, which closed on December 11. Their announcement of new progress followed recent discussions between President Obama and the Leaders of other TPP countries, during which the Leaders reaffirmed their mutual priority of concluding a state-of-the-art, comprehensive agreement as quickly as possible and of smoothly integrating the newest members, Canada and Mexico, into the negotiations.
USTR reported that the 11 delegations concentrated on finding pragmatic and mutually-beneficial outcomes to remaining issues under consideration during the 10-day round, while isolating the outstanding challenges to be addressed in the months ahead. They furthered their efforts to close the outstanding legal texts of the 29 chapters of the agreement covering all trade and investment-related issues between them, making progress across the agreement. With most chapters far along, the United States and its TPP partners agreed to work between now and the next round to address the handful of issues still open in them, in such areas as customs, telecommunications, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary issues, and other issues; and to intensify their efforts on the chapters where the volume of remaining work is more substantial. TPP member delegations continued to advance their work to develop the tariff packages on industrial goods, agriculture, and textiles, as well as on rules of origin promoting the development of supply chains that include companies based in the United States and the other TPP countries. In addition, they discussed their respective market-opening commitments on services and investment, and government procurement. On December 7, the TPP negotiators engaged with the more than 300 stakeholders registered to join the TPP stakeholder events in Auckland, including more than 70 stakeholders from virtually all TPP countries, who made presentations on a wide range of issues and met informally with TPP negotiators. The 16th round of TPP negotiations will be held in Singapore, from March 4-13, 2013. |
