Talks between the United States and eight Asia-Pacific countries on a free-trade pact are becoming more difficult but the chances of a deal remain good, the chief US negotiator said on Thursday. "Issues that are more sensitive are now coming to the fore," senior US trade negotiator Barbara Weisel told reporters. "But the fact that we are now entering the more difficult phase is not a cause for concern.
"It is part of the natural progression of any trade negotiation and an essential step on the path to an agreement and we are solidly on that path," Weisel said after the eighth round of talks on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, known as the TPP. Negotiators are aiming for the "broad outlines" of a deal by November 12-13, when President Barack Obama will host the annual summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Honolulu. A final deal could take many more months.
The United States is negotiating the TPP with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, which collectively would be about the fifth largest US trading partner. Weisel said Washington had yet to propose text in what are expected to be two of the most contentious areas of the negotiations: rules governing state-owned enterprises, known as SOEs, and rules protecting the rights of workers.
The United States plans to present its proposals on SOEs before the ninth round of TPP talks next month in Peru but may not propose its labour proposals at that meeting because it is still consulting with members of Congress and other stakeholders on the details, she said. US companies are concerned about the growing role of state-owned enterprises in international trade and want rules to ensure those entities do not receive government subsidies and other benefits that private firms do not enjoy.
Weisel said the United States had taken so long to develop its text because "it is vital to get these proposals right." Whatever rules are developed for SOEs are likely to become a precedent for talks with China, which has huge state-owned enterprises in a variety of sectors.
Recent US free-trade agreements include labour provisions based on a landmark deal between the White House and Congress in 2007 that Democrats want as the template for the TPP. It requires countries to adopt in law and maintain in practice five basic labour principles - freedom of association, right to collective bargaining, a ban on forced or compulsory labour, the effective abolition of child labour and a ban on discrimination in employment or occupation.
The agreement also allows for the use of trade sanctions to enforce the labour provisions, something that could be a particular concern for Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, all developing countries. Negotiators were getting closer to final agreements in customs, food safety, plant and animal health, technical barriers to trade, telecommunications, government procurement, small and medium-sized enterprises, regulatory coherence, development and competitiveness.
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