15-Mar-2013
AFP
Japan will announce its participation in talks to forge a US-backed free trade deal on Friday, an official said, giving the pact much-needed economic clout, but possibly angering farmers at home.
12-Mar-2013
New Medical
The TPP negotiators are making decisions that will affect at least 600 million people, and potentially hundreds of millions more, in complete secrecy, and this is unacceptable.
12-Mar-2013
Japan’s largest farm group rallied Tuesday in Tokyo to protest against the government’s entry into the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade talks.
12-Mar-2013
Jiji Press
Some 1,500 farmers in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido held a mass rally on Monday against the country joining Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations.
11-Mar-2013
3News
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is confident America will sign one of the world’s largest free trade deals, because its economic hands are tied. “How on earth, if you’re Obama, do you actually stimulate the economy and get jobs? The only way through it for him is basically through exporting, and the fastest way to do that in volume is in Asia. That’s why we think Americans will actually do the deal,” he says.
11-Mar-2013
The Nation
Business representatives from around the Asia-Pacific region, gathered for the current 16th round of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations in Singapore, urged negotiators to show flexibility and narrow the range of differences so that the talks can be brought to conclusion as soon as possible.
5-Mar-2013
MSF
As closed-door talks for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement resume in Singapore this week, international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières calls on the US government to end its stall tactics and revise its proposals for what otherwise promises to be the most harmful trade deal ever for access to medicines in developing countries.
28-Feb-2013
Bernama
Thailand and the Philippines are among countries that have recently expressed an interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) bandwagon with the other 11 stakeholders. US Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Jose Fernandez said the matter had been the subject of further discussion on his recent visit to both countries.
28-Feb-2013
AFP
A proposed US-Europe free-trade pact is unlikely to affect Washington’s efforts to negotiate a similar agreement with Asia-Pacific nations, a senior US trade official said Thursday.
27-Feb-2013
ADB
Intra-Asian trade is rising and so is the number of Asia’s free-trade agreements. Join ADB trade experts Ramesh Subramaniam and Jayant Menon in a live discussion.
23-Feb-2013
Reuters
The United States and Japan on Friday agreed on language aimed at giving Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe political cover to bring the world’s third-largest economy into negotiations on a US-led free trade agreement in the Asia Pacific region.
22-Feb-2013
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is making final preparations to announce Japan’s entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations after holding talks later Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, government sources said.
11-Feb-2013
About 120 members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party joined major lobby groups for a rally Thursday to oppose participation in the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks, stepping up pressure on the Abe administration to maintain barriers on sensitive items in the farming, fishing and medical markets.
11-Feb-2013
AFTINET
The Australian Fair Trade & Investment Network (AFTINET) presents a special seminar to mark the lead-up to International Women’s Day and the 16th Round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations being held in Singapore, on March 5, at 12.15 pm in the Waratah Room at NSW Parliament.
8-Feb-2013
WPR
A Wisconsin advocacy group says the state has lost thousands of jobs due to free trade agreements and is now pressuring President Obama to oppose a new agreement that would take down trade barriers between the United States and countries around the Pacific Rim.
24-Jan-2013
Infojustice
USTR has begun an “internal review of the controversial pharmaceutical patent proposal that U.S. trade officials tabled” earlier in the TPP negotiations.
22-Jan-2013
The United States is pleased with the pace of the Philippines’ growth but would like to see economic expansion sustained in the long term by further liberalization, a visiting US State Department official yesterday said.
22-Jan-2013
Bangkok Post
Thailand has recently stepped up its efforts on opening its market by joining various Free Trade Agreement negotiations such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. What would these FTAs mean for Thailand?
11-Jan-2013
This will be a big year for Japan in trade talks. Expanding trade is important for the Japanese economy because Japan lacks natural resources. In conducting trade talks, Japan must (1) try to find agreements beneficial to all negotiating partners while (2) protecting national interests, especially by preventing trade agreements from tearing up communities and from undermining the social policy fabric that Japan has painstakingly established over many decades.
8-Jan-2013
WSJ
The US is trying to use negotiations over a Pacific free-trade pact, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to formulate rules governing the behavior of state-owned concerns. China isn’t a party to the talks, but the US hopes Beijing would ultimately agree to whatever limitations the pact imposes on state-owned companies, reports the Wall Street Journal
