TPP - Canberra2014

CANBERRA -- The United States and Japan resumed bilateral talks on agricultural market access on the sidelines of the informal Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) round here, in line with a plan announced last week by Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler. Heading up the bilateral talks are USTR Chief Agricultural Negotiator Darci Vetter and Japanese Deputy Chief TPP Negotiator Hiroshi Oe. The two officials are holding talks here before relocating to Sydney ahead of the TPP ministerial meeting taking place...

CANBERRA -- Ahead of the latest round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks here, Australian trade officials drove home the point to domestic business representatives that the final deal will be truly plurilateral in terms of market access, raising hopes among industry groups that Japan will extend the same tariff concessions it grants to the United States to all other TPP countries. Officials from Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) delivered that message in a closed-door briefing last week...

CANBERRA -- Officials for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) identified at least two major defensive interests in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations in advance of a round that took place here this week: keeping in place quotas for Australian content on television and radio, as well as maintaining the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) that subsidizes medicines for Australians. Critics of the TPP in the Australian Parliament have also identified the audiovisual quotas as one domestic policy they see as...

CANBERRA -- As a new round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations kicked off here, Australian opposition lawmakers critical of the deal announced plans to ramp up their efforts to build resistance to TPP and press the government to change its course on key issues like investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) and transparency. At a rally in front of the Australian Parliament House on Oct. 20, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, a member of the Australian Greens who has been a major critic of...

CANBERRA -- In advance of an Oct. 25-27 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ministerial meeting, U.S. trade officials this week touted to Congress an article by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman in which he signaled that U.S. trading partners are unlikely to put their best offers on the negotiating table unless Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) is in place. "[B]y ensuring that Congress will consider trade agreements as they have been negotiated by the executive branch, trade promotion authority would give U.S. trading...

CANBERRA -- Canada has proposed an exception in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations that would allow it to maintain its current legal regime for internet service providers (ISPs) to address online copyright infringement, even though that system falls short of the requirements the United States is seeking in the TPP, according to informed sources here. The U.S. is pushing for an obligation in the TPP's intellectual property (IP) chapter under which all countries would be required to put in place...

CANBERRA -- Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators are considering language in the intellectual property (IP) chapter that would go a long way toward meeting a key U.S. industry demand that countries provide criminal penalties for the theft of trade secrets, but in a way that gives countries some flexibility in how they implement those remedies. This language -- included in a purported draft of the TPP IP chapter dated May 16 that was published last week by Wikileaks -- appears to...

CANBERRA -- U.S. brand-name drug companies are taking the position that they will only support a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that includes a time-based transition period for implementing intellectual property (IP) obligations rather than one linked to development indicators, but are willing to be flexible on their demand for 12 years of data exclusivity for biologic drugs, according to industry sources. In exchanges with government officials here and elsewhere, brand-name industry representatives are driving home the point that a reasonable...