No deal: How the TPP talks collapsed
NZ Herald | 10 November 2017
No deal: How the TPP talks collapsed
By: Audrey Young
UPDATE: Trans-Pacific trade deal advances without United States
The future of TPP has been thrown into doubt after Canada’s sudden refusal to attend the final leaders’ meeting in Danang, Vietnam, which was then cancelled.
The 10 other leaders including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern turned up expecting Canada to be present at 8pm NZ time.
Instead they found Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, holding crisis meetings with Canada’s Justin Trudeau over an undisclosed issue.
Abe returned to the room saying Trudeau was not attending and so the meeting was abandoned by the other countries, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Vietnam.
It will be extremely difficult to find any more time during the Apec summit to take the issue further.
That leaves trying to restart negotiations at a later time, possibly next year, exploring the possibility of TPP without Canada or ditching it altogether.
Ardern told New Zealand reporters that talks had been "postponed" and there was no suggestion of when they would reconvene.
She said she was left with the impression that Canada had withdrawn from the negotiations.
The dramas over Canada are not related to the bizarre events of last night in which the TPP deal was declared done by trade ministers, including Canada’s Trade Minister, but Vietnam then objected to a particular issue.
That issue was resolved during the day before the aborted leaders’ meeting.
