Category Archives: TPP Negotiations

Japan proposes tariff cuts for products sourced from TPP countries

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Kyodo     Aug 29, 2013    http://www.japantimes.co.jp

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN – Japan has proposed tariff cuts for products made from materials produced in countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, negotiation sources said Thursday.

For Japan, the proposal made during the ongoing round of TPP talks in Brunei means lower or no tariffs would be levied on Japanese firms’ products, subsequently boosting their competitiveness against those of countries not included in the TPP.

Twelve members of the TPP talks, including the United States, have been negotiating the rules for setting the scope of tariff reductions and eliminations in the working group for “rules of origin” in the TPP negotiations.

The 19th round is under way from Aug. 22 to Friday as countries aim to conclude a deal by the end of the year.

Japan is seeking a common rule among the TPP countries instead of having variations depending on each member country.

The negotiations on the rules of origin had been stalled, however, as Vietnam has been aiming to expand exports of its apparel and textiles by including those items made from yarn produced in China, a non-TPP member, in the target of tariff cuts and elimination, against the U.S. plan to limit the scope.

To facilitate the talks, the TPP countries have separated the negotiations on textiles from those on rules of origin.

The nine other countries involved in the TPP talks are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore.

Concerns Raised That TPP Negotiations Ensure Rights Of Countries Not Impinged On

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By Andrew Chernoff    August 29, 2013 Just-saying

Some people in the host country of the 19th Round of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Negotiations in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei are concerned about tobacco and the push by the United States and its’ tobacco multinational companies to water down nations’ rights to enact legislation or rules that discourage the use of tobacco products in the TPP participating countries.

In the August 29, 2013 edition of the Brunei Times newspaper, a letter to the editor raised a further concern that perhaps, it was not just tobacco that countries were being influenced to change their legislation or rules about.

The letter titled, “Solid stance or wishful thinking on TPP?”, the writer says:

“IN A Canadian paper dated August 27, 2013, it was stated that “The Americans, apparently at the behest of tobacco companies, are trying to water down nations’ rights to enact legislation or rules that discourage the use of tobacco products”.

Are tobacco companies the only ones doing this?

The letter from MoFAT published in your paper on the same date stated that “On the queries on whether the TPP will impinge upon Brunei Darussalam’s sovereignty, our accession to the TPP will not prevent us from continuing to apply our laws and regulations”.

“Watering down” national rights to enact certain kinds of legislation or rules would certainly lead to impingement of a country’s sovereignty.”

This concern is not just one the citizens of Brunei should be concerned about. Canadians should have the same concern, and with the secrecy that abounds with negotiations, and the fact that the Canadian government is determined to make the decision on the final look of the partnership agreement, all Canadians must make sure that our politicians inform us of the particulars of the agreement items and get feedback from the Canadian electorate before Parliament gives royal assent.

As one commenter to the article in the Brunei Times said, and I quote, “The public at large (society) needs to participate in this debate so governments can formulate better strategies to balance economic diversification efforts and protection of the public.”

I wholeheartedly agree. How about you?

Bloomberg, Health Experts Denounce Obama’s Gift to Big Tobacco in the TPP

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The Obama administration has drawn sharp criticism from leading health organizations, U.S. state representatives, and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg by caving to pressure from Big Tobacco to abandon safeguards for tobacco control policies in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the pending “free trade” deal with 11 Pacific Rim countries. The administration has scrapped a proposal to provide a “safe harbor” for tobacco control measures.

Instead the administration will issue a proposal in the current Brunei round of TPP negotiations that clears a path for tobacco corporations to use the TPP to directly challenge governments’ progressive public health measures.  

In response to the announcement, a major victory in tobacco corporations’ effort to use TPP-like deals to roll back anti-smoking safeguards, Dr. Gregory Connolly of the Harvard School of Public Health stated, “Our government’s trade policy is promoting the tobacco epidemic.”

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The American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids denounced the Obama administration’s decision to cave to Big Tobacco’s TPP demands at the expense of public health. Legal and health experts at the Harvard School of Public Health, Georgetown University Law Center, and Action on Smoking and Health blasted the TPP proposal, finding it “will do little to protect governments’ right to regulate tobacco.” The state of Maine’s Citizen Trade Policy Commission concluded, “it would be better to not offer this text at all than to give the false impression that the United States is serious about protecting government authority within the TPP to regulate tobacco to protect health.”

Articles spotlighting the administration’s TPP backtracking have appeared in many prominent news sources, including the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg also weighed in on the TPP controversy by releasing a scathing op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. Bloomberg noted that not only would the U.S. proposal restrict tobacco control measures and significantly decrease the price of cigarettes, but also expose TPP governments to direct “investor-state” challenges launched by tobacco corporations against public health laws:

If the Obama administration’s policy reversal is allowed to stand, not only will cigarettes  be cheaper for the 800 million people in the countries affected by the trade pact, but multinational tobacco corporations will be able to challenge those governments — including America’s — for implementing lifesaving public health policies. This would not only put our tobacco-control regulations in peril, but also create a chilling effect that would prevent further action, which is desperately needed.

He’s right. The TPP’s extreme investor privileges would empower tobacco corporations to skirt domestic legal systems and attack tobacco control policies before extrajudicial tribunals as a means of intimidating policymakers who would dare to enact such safeguards. The Obama administration’s proposal does nothing to limit, or even to address, this empowerment of Big Tobacco.

Unfortunately, the investor-state threat is not a hypothetical one. Phillip Morris has already used such investor privileges in other treaties to attack landmark anti-smoking laws in Australia and Uruguay after failing to undermine those health laws in domestic courts.  As Andrew Martin points out in Bloomberg, Philip Morris has been leading Big Tobacco’s battle to pressure the Obama administration to weaken tobacco-control safeguards in the TPP.

The Obama administration’s caving to that pressure makes clear the TPP’s very real threat to public health.  As Laurent Huber of Action on Smoking and Health stated, the new tobacco-friendly proposal for TPP “will mean more lives lost, both here in the US and abroad.” It is more crucial than ever to expose the TPP and to stop it from being fast tracked through Congress. Our health depends on it. 

Japanese farmers’ opposition to TPP waning, Malaysian minister says

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Kyodo News International    August 29, 2013

Japan’s minister in charge of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Akira Amari, has said opposition toward the TPP from his country’s powerful agriculture lobby is dying down, albeit slowly, according to Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamad.

Speaking to reporters this week, Mustapa said Amari made the remark to him on the sidelines of the recently concluded TPP ministerial meeting in Brunei last week.

Later, Amari said he had not made a direct remark on farmers’ concerns to Mustapa, but he indicated that someone in his delegation may have made the comment.

Mustapa, however, told Kyodo News, “The Japanese shared with us some issues they have in agriculture, but they told me that opposition is slowly dying down. It wasn’t as serious as it was six months ago. In their view, it’s manageable.”

The agriculture lobby in Japan has been at the forefront in opposing the Trans-Pacific free trade deal, urging the government to protect sensitive farm products like rice, wheat, beef, pork, dairy products and sugar.

Japan, which first participated in the TPP negotiations only at the tail end of the 18th round in Malaysia, is now in full gear at the 19th round in Brunei that runs through Friday.

Mustapa described the Japanese delegation as “very gung ho.”

“Japan is one of those countries that’s very committed. Although they’ve just come on board, they’re very aggressive,” he said.

The Malaysian government is also facing growing opposition toward the TPP.

Leading the dissent is former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who on Monday urged the government to pull out from the talks.

He slammed the free trade pact as a U.S. tool to colonize smaller countries such as Malaysia.

But one of his concerns is that the pact would strip away the government’s affirmative action policy of giving special treatment to ethnic Malays, who account for more than 60 percent of the country’s 29 million population but still lag behind the minority ethnic Chinese in the economic sector.

Mustapa said the government will conduct two cost-benefit analyses on the TPP — one on the impact on small and medium-sized enterprises and the interests of ethnic Malays, and the other on the overall national interest.

The studies, once they begin, are expected to take about two to three months to complete.

Mustapa said the studies will not delay the negotiations that are targeted to be wrapped up by year-end.

“Negotiation is still in progress. There’s no finality to it yet,” he said.

He added, “There are many issues that are still outstanding and we’re not going to be bound by any timeline.”

He reiterated that “if the agreement doesn’t serve the national interest, we will not sign.”

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement involves Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, which together account for about a third of global economic output.

TPP: Three nations propose tariff abolition on all items

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August 28, 2013     http://the-japan-news.com

The Yomiuri Shimbun

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei—Three countries taking part in the current round of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations have proposed tariffs be abolished on all imports from their countries to Japan, it has been learned.

Singapore, Peru and Chile, during their respective bilateral discussions with Japan in Brunei, made the proposals, sources involved in the negotiations said Monday. Removing all tariffs is the TPP’s basic principle.

With the proposals, the three countries are believed to aim to seek an extremely high level of trade liberalization from Japan.

Japan, on the other hand, hopes to maintain tariffs in five key categories, including rice, but the latest proposals from the negotiating partners again highlighted the difficulty in the discussions over tariffs.

As of Monday, Japan has so far exchanged proposals regarding tariff abolition and trade liberalization with seven countries.

Although the contents of the proposals made by these negotiators differ from one another, sources say Japan offered to keep its liberalization rate—the percentage of trade goods for which tariffs could be removed—at between 80 percent and 89 percent, according to the sources.

Negotiations over details of tariff rules are conducted in bilateral talks. In such talks, countries first submit to each other a list of items notifying which tariffs should be removed.

Based on the lists, they continue talks and decide on products on which they agree to abolish tariffs.

In principle, tariffs should be abolished on all items, but how far negotiators allow their counterpart to have exceptions is the key to negotiations.

Japan and the three countries have only exchanged draft lists, and where the liberalization rate will eventually be set depends on how the negotiations progress.

Japan already signed economic partnership agreements with the three nations.

Under the EPAs that Japan has concluded so far, the liberalization rate stood between 84.4 percent and 88.4 percent, avoiding tariff abolition in the five key categories.

U.S., Australia to be key

The proposals raised by Singapore, Peru and Chile in their bilateral talks reflect the basic principle of the TPP framework that all tariffs should be abolished.

The focus of attention will now shift to developments in bilateral talks with the United States and Australia, both of which are agricultural giants with strong bargaining power.

During the Brunei TPP negotiations, the Japanese delegation is scheduled to submit a liberalization rate—the ratio that indicates percentages of trade items for which a nation can abolish tariffs—to nine countries in bilateral talks, except the United States and Australia.

The United States needs a certain period of time for research on impacts of trade liberalization with Japan, which newly joined the TPP talks.

The U.S. government thus will not have tariff talks with Japan this time, but will have the talks in mid-September.

Australia will not hold substantial negotiations with Japan on tariffs with Australia’s general election scheduled for September.

Japan has not concluded free trade agreements with the United States and Australia, because increased imports of low-priced pork and beef from the agricultural giants may seriously harm domestic livestock farmers.

In economic partnership agreements which Japan has concluded in the past, the liberalization rate was generally in the 80 percent range.

Sources said the United States and Australia will not be convinced by such a figure.

The key to success of Japan’s participation in the TPP talks depends on what strategy Japan will take in tariff abolishment talks with the two countries.