Canadian Meat Council Hopeful TPP will Move Forward Without U.S.

By Bruce Cochrane.

The Canadian Meat Council is hopeful the 11 remaining nations involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership will find a way to move forward with the trade agreement without the United States.

Since the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in January there have been a number of meetings among officials of the remaining member countries and several ministerial meetings aimed at moving the agreement forward.

Ron Davidson, the Director of International Trade, Government and Media Relations with Canadian Meat Council, says Canadian agriculture is pressing very hard for the federal government to move forward on the TPP.

Ron Davidson-Canadian Meat Council:

We are hopeful that perhaps in November, during the next meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Group, that there will be a decision by the TPP-11 ministers to move forward.

Whether the text would be the exact text that was already negotiated when the U.S. was part of the negotiations, that could be an option.

That text could be implemented in a way that would set aside and not implement immediately those clauses that were of particular interest to the U.S. or the 11 countries could simply come up with a new text that excludes those provisions which were of particular interest to the U.S.

Either way we are pressing very hard and asking the government to move forward and move forward quickly on this for a number of reasons.

Certainly the TPP markets are of great interest to us, particularly Japan where Australia already has a bilateral agreement, where the European Union is well advanced in negotiating a bilateral agreement and we would like to assure our access to the TPP markets, particularly Japan, as soon as possible.

Davidson says a lot still must happen but he is hopeful that in November there will be a clear path forward identified and approved by the ministers.

Source: Farmscape