TPP nations seek to lay groundwork for broad agreement

Chief negotiators from the remaining 11 signatory nations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement are set to start three-day talks in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture.

They hope to complete the final stages of the negotiation so that a broad agreement can be reached at a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ( Apec) forum in November.

The focus of the talks scheduled to start today was to be New Zealand and Vietnam. New Zealand’s new administration is wary of the TPP, and Vietnam has consistently been dissatisfied with the idea of discussions without the United States.

“We plan to make progress in the final stages of the talks, aimed at reaching a conclusion,” Toshimitsu Motegi, minister in charge of economic revitalisation, said.

Since the United States left the TPP, the nations have been negotiating over temporarily freezing some items to reflect US demands. Most of the nations want to leave the agreement unchanged to prevent prolonging the negotiations.

If the United States wanted to rejoin the TPP in the future, the frozen items could be opened up again.

So far, there have been requests to freeze about 50 items, including one that would set the duration of copyrights on works such as movies, a field in which the United States is strong to “at least 70 years”.

Japan wants to reduce the number of items by half in the meetings in Chiba, sources said.

The nations plan to hold summit and ministerial meetings on Nov 10 and 11 in Vietnam’s Danang, on the sidelines of the Apec summit.

Japan wants the pact to go into effect soon, and hopes that final decisions on what items to freeze can be made at the ministerial meeting, so they can announce that a broad agreement has been reached.

However, Mexico has expressed uncertainty about the agreement.

“One or two countries may have different opinions,” Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said. — The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network