Chief
negotiators from the remaining 11 signatory nations of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership free trade agreement are set to start three-day talks in Urayasu,
Chiba Prefecture, on Monday.They hope to complete the final stages of the
negotiation so that a broad agreement can be reached at a summit meeting of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.
The focus
of the talks scheduled to start Monday was to be New Zealand and Vietnam. New
Zealand’s new administration is wary of the TPP, and Vietnam has consistently
been dissatisfied with the idea of discussions without the United States.“We plan to make progress
in the final stages of the talks, aimed at reaching a conclusion,” Toshimitsu
Motegi, minister in charge of economic revitalization, said at a press
conference on Tuesday.
Since the United States
left the signed accord, the 11 nations have been negotiating over temporarily
freezing some items to reflect U.S. demands. Most of the nations want to leave
the agreement unchanged to prevent prolonging the negotiations. If the United
States wanted to rejoin the TPP in the future, the frozen items could be opened
up again.
So far, there have been
requests to freeze about 50 items, including one that would set the duration of
copyrights on works such as movies, a field in which the United States is
strong, to “at least 70 years.” Japan wants to reduce the number of items by
half in the meetings in Chiba, sources said.
The 11 nations plan to hold
summit and ministerial meetings on Nov. 10 and 11 in Vietnam’s Danang, on the
sidelines of the APEC summit meeting.Japan wants the pact to go into effect
soon, and hopes that final decisions on what items to freeze can be made at the
ministerial meeting, so they can announce to their leaders that a broad
agreement has been reached.
However,
Mexico has expressed uncertainty about the agreement. “One or two countries may
have different opinions,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said.Vietnam,
which was hesitant about a TPP without the United States, finally presented the
official list of items it wants frozen in late October. Vietnam’s large textile
industry had been counting on increased exports to the United States, so it
appears to be demanding that rules on removing tariffs on textiles be relaxed
so it can increase its exports to other countries. Negotiations over this issue
are expected to be difficult.New Zealand inaugurated a new administration in
October under Jacinda Ardern. The new government has been investigating the
prospect of revising parts of the TPP.
“Whether
it’s TPP or any other agreement, it’s making sure we have the ability to ban
foreign buyers from buying existing homes in New Zealand,” Ardern said in a
Reuters report from Thursday.This indicates New Zealand will demand the accord
be revised to make it possible to suppress speculative investments by
foreigners. If this revision is allowed, the negotiations would have to go back
to square one.
Source: Japan News, Japan Monday, 30 October 2017