Oct 6, 2015

U.S. concludes Pacific trade agreement

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced on Oct. 4 that the ministers of 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States – have reached a conclusion in their TPP negotiations.

The TPP negotiations took more than five years to finalize this agreement. Negotiators will continue technical work to formalize the agreement and will release publically a complete text once the technical details have been worked out.

“We’re pleased that they’re moving toward getting TPP concluded,” said John Keeling, president of the National Potato Council president. “It offers a tremendous opportunity for a number of commodities that export with the TPP countries.”

Keeling said that the elimination and/or reduction of tariff barriers in TPP will help keep the U.S. competitive with other countries that have already negotiated lower tariff rates with TPP countries.

“There’s a lot of due diligence to do in terms of finishing it and getting it translated,” Keeling said. “Hopefully, they’ll move as quickly as they can to get it before Congress. If not this year then very early next year so we can move forward with this agreement.

For more information on the TPP agreement visit this USTR website.