Trans-Pacific Treaty Negotiators Report Progress

December 18, 2012

Washington — Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiators in Auckland, New Zealand, reported further solid steps in closing the remaining gaps between them during the 15th round of negotiations, which ended December 11, 2012.

Their announcement followed recent discussions between President Obama and the leaders of other Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries in which the leaders reaffirmed their mutual priority of concluding a state-of-the-art, comprehensive trade agreement as quickly as possible and of smoothly integrating the newest members, Canada and Mexico, into the negotiations.

Canada and Mexico, the United States’ two largest export markets, participated in the TPP negotiations for the first time. Over the past several months, the United States and the eight other TPP countries — Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — worked with Canada and Mexico as they prepared to join.

“Their participation adds significantly to the economic importance of the agreement as well as to establishing TPP as the most promising pathway to promote regional economic integration,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a December 11 press release.

During the 10-day negotiations, the 11 delegations worked on the unfinished pieces of the 29 chapters of the agreement covering all trade and investment-related issues between them. The TPP partners agreed to work until the next round to address the handful of issues still open, in such areas as customs, telecommunications, technical barriers to trade, and sanitary and phytosanitary issues, and to intensify their efforts on the chapters where the volume of remaining work is more substantial.

Steps forward during this round were made on goods, services and investment, and government procurement. The TPP delegations were able to set timetables for work before the next round. The 16th round of TPP negotiations will be held in Singapore from March 4 to 13.

On December 7, the TPP negotiations were temporarily adjourned so negotiators could engage with the more than 300 stakeholders registered to join the TPP stakeholder events in Auckland. This included people from virtually all TPP countries, who made presentations on a wide range of issues and met informally with TPP negotiators. The chief negotiator from each TPP country briefed the stakeholders and took questions on the substance and process of the TPP talks.