ID :
318440
Fri, 02/21/2014 - 13:09
Auther :

Ex-USTR Official Sees Japan-U.S. Summit as Key to Sealing TPP

Tokyo, Feb. 21 (Jiji Press)--The upcoming Japan-U.S. summit meeting will be a key opportunity for the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations, former senior U.S. trade official Ira Shapiro has suggested. A bilateral agreement between Japan and the United States will be a "trigger" for a broader agreement, Shapiro said during a recent interview with Jiji Press in Tokyo. A meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, scheduled for April, would be "the most important time," said Shapiro, former general counsel and ambassador in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the administration of President Bill Clinton. "The real question is whether the United States and Japan can resolve their differences in their bilateral discussions," he said, adding that "the other countries will hold back until that happens." Japan and the United States have been in a tug of war as both sides seek to win exceptional treatment for some of their key products, such as Japanese rice and American automobiles, despite the TPP's no-exception principle. "One of the difficulties in a negotiation is having credible deadlines, which force people to make their best offers and make the compromises necessary to reach an agreement," Shapiro said. TPP talks lack such a deadline, he added. While acknowledging the importance of the upcoming TPP ministerial meeting in Singapore from Saturday, Shapiro pointed out that negotiations can go on for a long time without an agreement unless negotiators are given instructions from the highest level. The meeting between Obama and Abe would be a "credible action-forcing mechanism," he said. Doubts remain over Obama's capacity to move the negotiations forward without Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, which gives his administration significant power to act decisively in the talks. But "if you wait for TPA, you have to wait a long time and Congress is likely to approve TPA only when they realize there has been a meaningful (bilateral) agreement," Shapiro said. Shapiro played a key role in completing the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade talks in the 1990s. END

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