Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Talks Advance

February 23, 2011

Last week United States officials met in Santiago, Chile with officials from Australia, Brunei Daussalem, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam for the fifth round of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations. According to USTR reports, the negotiations made progress in the areas of goods market access, investment, rules of origin and intellectual property. Officials also began discussing issues including labor, services, sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures, government procurement, and competition policy.

The participating officials also agreed to exchange requests for improvements in the tariff offers they exchanged in January, as well as their first offers on services, investment, and government procurement. They further agreed to extend duration of the sixth round negotiations scheduled for late March in Singapore.

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