Many Technical Work Remains In TPP Brunei Round Schedule

The 19th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations that kicked off in Brunei this week will pay attention to several areas where large amounts of technical work remain.

Two of the most difficult areas in TPP’s talks are intellectual property rights (IPR) and market access.

On IPR, one issue which is still unresolved is the length of data exclusivity protection for biologic drugs as well as general provisions on pharmaceutical IPR. The consumer group Public Citizen statement highlighted the strong opposition from other TPP countries to U.S. patent and copyright proposals.

On SOEs, Public Citizen hinted that this chapter is not likely to be resolved in the near term unless the TPP countries in “absolute opposition” to the U.S. proposal suddenly change their position or the U.S. gives up on its SOE proposal altogether. 

On market access, there are unresolved issues here:

- In the U.S-New Zealand relations, the US has not yet come forward with a meaningful offer on dairy market access for New Zealand.

- In the U.S-Australia relations, the US is still refusing to negotiate goods market access with Australia, which is seeking greater access for its sugar exports to the US. 

- In the U.S-Vietnam relations, these countries poised to engage in more substantive discussions on footwear where Vietnam is seeking lower U.S. imports tariffs although tariff reductions are opposed by U.S. domestic producers. Regarding market access for Vietnam’s apparel products, discussions have focused mostly on the rule of origin with “yarn-forward” rule which would prevent Vietnam from using yarns and fabrics from non-TPP countries like China to make apparel eligible for tariff cuts. TPP countries are negotiating a “short supply” list of inputs that would be excepted from this rule. 

Also unresolved is whether TPP allow companies to self-certify that they have met the rules of origin or require them to obtain a certificate of origin from an authorized body in the exporting country.

- In the U.S-Japan relations, Public Citizen questioned whether the U.S. would allow Japan to exclude five sensitive agriculture products from full liberalization. Japan and the U.S. will hold off on exchanging offers until after USTR analyzes a report of the U.S. International Trade Commission on the probably economic effect of lowering U.S. tariffs on Japanese goods. 

According to the Public Citizen there is opposition from other countries to the U.S. demands that labor and environmental rules be subject to full dispute settlement and to U.S. proposals that would limit countries’ ability to use capital controls to stem financial crises and would strengthen the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

Source: collective information of WTO center