Mexico Invited to Join US-backed Pacific Free Trade Agreement Talks -- The Hill
Posted June 19th, 2012
Mexico Invited to Join US-backed Pacific Free Trade Agreement Talks -- The Hill
"The United States formally announced Monday that Mexico has been invited to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks. "We are obviously two of our most important trading partners to each other, but we both recognize that growth is going to take place in the Asia Pacific region," President Obama said at the meeting of the G-20 in Los Cabos, Mexico. The administration has been negotiating the free-trade agreement — the only major trade deal high on the U.S. agenda at the moment — with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Until this week, NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada had been unable to meet conditions needed to join the talks. The U.S. had pressured Mexico to resolve issues related to the beef and potato trade as well as to intellectual property protection. The U.S. also wanted Mexico to agree on negotiating labor and environmental provisions which are not in NAFTA. The announcement now puts pressure on Canada to make agricultural trade concessions in order not to be left out. So far, Canada has resisted putting its supply-managed dairy and livestock sectors on the table...There have been 12 rounds of negotiations since TPP talks started under President George W. Bush's administration. The next round is in San Diego in July."