Trade deal can be saved, says Ciobo
TRADE Minister Steve Ciobo is confident Canada will sign up to the 11-country free-trade agreement that would give Australia access to markets worth a trillion dollars.
Negotiations have been revived on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has floundered since the US rejected the deal in January.
But the TPP-11 was thrown into limbo on Friday after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau snubbed an APEC leaders meeting on the deal and raised unforeseen issues.
Mr Ciobo indicated he believed the Canadian concerns could be overcome.
“Having lost a bit of a momentum on the back of the decision by the Canadians not to attend the leaders meeting, we’ll have to keep working methodically through it,” he told ABC TV yesterday.
“I’m very confident. And I know my counterparts in the 10 other countries, we all feel we can accommodate the various questions outstanding.”
There were effectively four issues of concern to Canada to be resolved, Mr Ciobo said.
The main issue is in relation to cultural exemptions for elements of broadcast policy that impacts its French-speaking province of Quebec.
A successful TPP deal would give Australia new market access to Mexico and Canada, two countries with which it does not have a free-trade agreement.
“It involves a bit of give and take. We’ve done great work on a very important deal,” Mr Ciobo said.
Labor frontbencher and former trade minister Richard Marles said there needed to be an independent economic analysis of what a final TPP deal would look like.
“That’s just the prudent sensible answer to the question about whether or not you support any given trade deal,” Mr Marles told Sky News.
The TPP was an attempt to give a practical trade expression to the aspirations of the AsiaPacific Economic Co-operation forum, Mr Marles said.
“A TPP without the US is a very different entity, as it is now without Canada,” he said.
“The Canadian PM is clearly equivocating and that is deeply disappointing . . . as is the position the US took under President (Donald) Trump.”