Speaking at the conference on TPP negotiations in HCMC last Friday, Tran Quoc Khanh, head of the Vietnamese TPP negotiation delegation and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, said that the team is trying to conclude the agreement as soon as possible. However, negotiators from participating countries agreed that no agreement is still better than a bad agreement. They will not sacrifice quality of the TPP agreement due to time pressure, Khanh said.

TOKYO, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday called for a senior minister of his Cabinet to speed up talks on the sluggish Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal and insisted an agreement be found at an early juncture.

As participating countries failed to reconcile a variety of conflicts, including one between Japan and the United States, an accord on creating a new free trade zone in Asia and the Pacific region has been postponed till next year. A rough road lies ahead for the negotiations.

(Reuters) - An ambitious trade pact between a dozen countries around the Pacific Rim will not be finalized this year as hoped, with no agreement on thorny issues like intellectual property, agricultural tariffs and state-owned enterprises. The U.S.-backed deal, which Washington wanted to conclude this year, aims to establish a free-trade bloc stretching from Vietnam to Chile andJapan, encompassing about 800 million people and almost 40 percent of the global economy. But differences over farm tariffs between the United States and Japan proved to be one of the major roadblocks.

Japan and the United States on Monday continued their bilateral talks to solve remaining issues on the fringes of a multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade meeting being held in Singapore, after the two failed to bridge gaps the day before. In their meeting held Monday morning, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Japanese Senior Vice Minister of the Cabinet Office Yasutoshi Nishimura likely made new efforts to meet halfway over tariffs Tokyo seeks to retain on farm products, as well as auto trade, an area in which Washington wants more concessions from Japan.

SINGAPORE, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A four-day Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ministerial meeting kicked off in Singapore on Saturday, with the United States apparently pushing for the conclusion of the talks by the end of the year. The latest round of talks are important as leaders and senior trade officials of the United States have recently said that they are hoping for the talks to conclude by the end of the year.

TOKYO, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Akira Amari, Japan's minister in charge of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade negotiations of Japan, brushed aside on Sunday the possibility of making further concessions to the United States on sensitive issues. "We had a very tense discussion on outstanding issues, but we reached no conclusion," the minister for economic and fiscal policy told reporters after meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman in Tokyo.

(Reuters) - Asian trade powerhouse South Korea took a step closer on Friday to joining 12-nation talks aimed at slashing trade barriers between nations making up about 40 percent of the world economy. The world's seventh-largest exporter said after a meeting of top economic officials that it would soon enter negotiations with the United States, Japan, Canada and nine others already in the group.

SALT LAKE CITY – Chief negotiators from the 12 countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations set the stage Sunday for next month’s ministerial meeting, ending their talks aimed at sifting through as many thorny issues as possible.

The leak of a document purported to be part of the draft text for the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord has further dented optimism talks can be concluded by the end of this year.