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 Trade ministers go into the talks, which run from July 28 to 31 on
the island of Maui, with high hopes of a pact to conclude the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the most sweeping trade deal in a
generation and a legacy-defining achievement for U.S. President
Barack Obama.
But although officials in Maui said the mood was optimistic, the
toughest issues have been left until last, including monopoly
periods for new life-saving medicines and preferential treatment for
state-owned companies, besides more traditional issues such as
allowing more competition in protected markets.
"This meeting will be extremely important to decide the fate of the
TPP negotiations," Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari told
reporters on Friday.
"I believe all the nations will come to the meeting with their
strong determination that it has to be the last one."
Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast was more cautious, warning last week
that there was a lot of hard work still to be done.
Canada's refusal so far to accept more dairy imports is a major
sticking point in the talks, infuriating the United States as well
as New Zealand, which has said it will not sign a deal that fails to
open new dairy markets.
Mexico, which buys half its imports from Canada and the United
States and very few from other TPP countries, was also falling short
in opening its markets, a source close to the talks said.
Failure to agree this week will endanger an already tight timeline
to get a deal through the divided U.S. Congress this year, before
the 2016 presidential campaign dominates the agenda.
A six-week battle over U.S. legislation to streamline the passage of
trade deals through Congress finally ended in late June, sparking a
rush of negotiations to ready ministers to take the tough decisions
needed to wrap up the talks.
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Tami Overby, senior vice president for Asia with the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, said it would be very difficult to keep the momentum going
if ministers failed to reach agreement this week, although she added
that she was optimistic of success.
A U.S. official said talks would continue if there was no finalized
agreement in Maui.
Peruvian unions, however, recently filed a complaint with the U.S.
Department of Labor, saying their government was falling short of
standards in a 2009 U.S.-Peru trade deal, which, like the TPP, is
supposed to ensure internationally-recognized labor benchmarks.
Workers' rights in TPP countries, especially Vietnam, have been a
key concern for U.S. Democratic lawmakers, many of whom fear the
trade deal will eliminate U.S. jobs partly because of lower labor
standards overseas.
Some trade diplomats from TPP nations doubted whether ministers
could produce a detailed agreement by Friday. One option would be to
reach an in-principle deal and then finalize details later, one
official said.
(Reporting by Krista Hughes; Additional reporting by David Ljunggren
in Ottawa and Kaori Kaneko in Tokyo; Editing by Paul Simao and
Clarence Fernandez)
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