Key TPP Negotiations Underway in Maui

Jul 27, 2015

By Bruce Cochrane

The Canadian Meat Council is calling for full Canadian participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Trans-Pacific Partnership chief negotiators have been meeting in Maui since Friday to work out various technical issues in preparation for meetings involving the trade ministers from the 12 participating nations slated to begin tomorrow.

There is speculation that a final agreement will be reached during those talks.

Ron Davidson, the director of international trade, government and media relations with the Canadian Meat Council, says the red meat industry is looking forward to a quick conclusion of this deal among all 12 countries, including Canada as a full partner.

Ron Davidson-Canadian Meat Council:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is clearly the most promising and most active trade negotiations that are currently going on.

It covers both side of the Pacific Ocean and accounts for currently, among the 12 membership, about 40 percent of the world GDP.
This is the trade agreement that will be setting the rules of trade for at least the next decade and probably longer in the global forum.
This is a very ambitious trade agreement which started out with the intent of having true free trade among all 12 countries and the negotiations have proceeded along that track.

We don't expect that all tariffs may be eliminated by the end of the agreement but certainly we expect most of them will be.

In addition to that the rules that have been set up are new rules that go beyond the rules that we've had in multilateral trade agreements like this before hand, so really it is a forward looking agreement.
Certainly it is extremely important for countries that are already participating and we anticipate others will in the future.

Davidson says the best place to be in these agreements is in at the beginning, so being there as a founding member is absolutely critical to the future of the Canadian livestock industry and to Canada's future.

Source: Farmscape

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