Today the White House announced the nomination of Mark David Gilbert of Palm Beach, Florida to be the next American Ambassador to New Zealand and to the Independent State of Samoa. The nomination will now go to the U.S. Senate for consideration. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Gilbert would become the 22nd American Ambassador posted in Wellington.
Mr. Gilbert has worked for many years in the investment banking sector and is currently director of Barclays Bank in Palm Beach. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, he earned a degree in finance from Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has been involved in a variety of charitable and fundraising activities, and currently serves on the Sundance Institute’s Utah Advisory Board.
My research reveals that Mr. Gilbert would be the first Major League Baseball player ever to sit in the chair I now occupy. He was drafted out of college by the Chicago Cubs and played for several years on teams affiliated with the Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago White Sox. His Major League debut was in 1985 as a pinch hitter with the White Sox. While in the minor leagues, he was honored as the Cincinnati Reds (Indianapolis) AAA Rookie of the Year, and as Chicago Cubs (Quad Cities) Player of the Month, which netted him his own Topps Baseball Card.
I have spoken with Mr. Gilbert on a several occasions, and I look forward to tracking his confirmation process. If confirmed, he would be joined in Wellington by this wife, Nancy. The couple has two adult daughters, Danielle and Elizabeth.
Ambassador David Huebner
We, the Leaders of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam, are pleased to announce today that our countries are on track to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. Ministers and negotiators have made significant progress in recent months on all the legal texts and annexes on access to our respective goods, services, investment, financial services, government procurement, and temporary entry markets. We have agreed that negotiators should now proceed to resolve all outstanding issues with the objective of completing this year a comprehensive and balanced, regional agreement that achieves the goals we established in Honolulu in 2011, ensures the benefits of the agreement are fully shared, and takes into account the diversity of our levels of development.
A final Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement must reflect our common vision to establish a comprehensive, next-generation model for addressing both new and traditional trade and investment issues, supporting the creation and retention of jobs and promoting economic development in our countries. The deepest and broadest possible liberalization of trade and investment will ensure the greatest benefits for countries’ large and small manufacturers, service providers, farmers, and ranchers, as well as workers, innovators, investors, and consumers.
We see the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with its high ambition and pioneering standards for new trade disciplines, as a model for future trade agreements and a promising pathway to our APEC goal of building a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific. We are encouraged by the growing interest in this important negotiation and are engaging with other Asia-Pacific countries that express interest in the TPP regarding their possible future participation.
Stakeholders across the region have provided valuable input to TPP negotiating teams both on-site at rounds and in our respective countries. As we work to conclude these negotiations, we will further intensify consultations with stakeholders to craft a final agreement that appropriately addresses the interests of our citizens. We look forward to review and consideration of the outcome of our work, consistent with each of our domestic processes.
Prime Minister presents awards at gala ceremony celebrating
New Zealand – United States trade relationship
Auckland, 8 August 2013 undefined The 14th annual AmCham DHL Express Success & Innovation Awards have been held this evening at the Pullman Auckland Hotel, with Greenshell New Zealand winning the Supreme Award for trade with the United States.
Greenshell New Zealand manufactures a range of innovative products marketed under the award winning Ikana brand, which add value to its organically grown Greenshell™ Mussels. The products are targeted at retail and foodservice sectors in key export markets, most notably the USA. The company is a family owned business which is transforming itself from mussel farm to branded food company.
“Greenshell New Zealand is an excellent case study of how New Zealand companies can evolve from commodity suppliers to added value exporters, selling premium products to customers around the world who are prepared to pay for them. The judges were highly impressed by the company’s disciplined and structured approach as it made this critical leap. Their new customer led business model has been responsible for a range of highly successful differentiated products, as well as clever market targeting and segmentation, backed up by high quality branding and packaging,” said Stephen Titter, Awards judge.
AmCham was delighted to welcome Prime Minister John Key to his first AmCham Awards dinner where he presented the three exporter awards.
Tim Baxter, country manager DHL Express New Zealand, who announced the supreme winner said, “In the transformation of their business, Greenshell has embodied the spirit of innovation, which is what we’re celebrating here tonight. In addition, the calibre of the category winners is incredibly high, which bodes well for forging successful business relationships between New Zealand and the US.”
The Supreme Award is chosen from the winners of each of the categories presented on the night. The complete list of winners follows:
The AmCham DHL Express Success & Innovation Awards celebrate success and innovation in the export, import and investment sectors between New Zealand and its third-largest trading partner, the USA. Winners of the importer and exporter categories receive a return economy Class ticket on Hawaiian Airlines from Auckland to one of the following destinations of their choice: Honolulu, Maui, The Big Island, Kauai, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Portland, Phoenix, Sacramento or New York.
In addition to AmCham, DHL-Express and Hawaiian Airlines, the Awards are also supported by Baldwins, Fonterra, Prescient Marketing & Communications and Unlimited magazine.
Other previous winners of the Supreme Award include Zespri International, Specialist Marine Interiors, Peace Software, Airways Corporation, HumanWare, Tenon, Orion Systems International, Zeacom and Pratt & Whitney Air New Zealand Services t/a Christchurch Engine Centre, Buckley Systems and Vista Entertainment.
By BM, IPR Enforcement, NZ music industry
This article highlights the Report of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, published on behalf of The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property by the National Bureau of Asian Research, May 2013.
The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property is an independent and bipartisan initiative of leading Americans from the private sector, public service in national security and foreign affairs, academe, and politics1.
The three purposes of the Commission2 are to:
· Document and assess the causes, scale, and other major dimensions of international intellectual property theft as they affect the United States
· Document and assess the role of China in international intellectual property theft
· Propose appropriate U.S. policy responses that would mitigate ongoing and future damage and obtain greater enforcement of intellectual property rights by China and other infringers
The report was written by several leading Americans from a wide range of industries and experience3; from the two co-chairs; Admiral (Rtd.) Dennis C. Blair and Jon M. Hunstman Jr, Slade Gorton (former U.S. Senator, the State of Washington), Craig R. Barrett (former CEO Intel Corporation) to Michael K. Young (President of the University of Washington).
The article was written to publically highlight the contemporary issues facing the United States of America (USA) in relation to the widespread theft of American intellectual property (IP) of an estimated value of hundreds of billions of dollar (US) per year4.
The USA has been the significant leader in the development, support and commercialisation of IP since the Industrial Revolution but has recently noticed substantial financial losses from IP theft across all sectors (public/private) but significantly from technology and defense IP.
While the Report clearly identifies the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) as the current primary infringer, other emerging economic powers such as Russia, India and other weak Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) environments are also contributing to the overall impact.
The question was asked; why does China stand out5? As China is funding a staggeringly comprehensive national development program, a large portion of new capabilities and technologies has been rapidly secured through the legal purchase, licencing and support of foreign IP. Unfortunately the current IPR environment in China and that of general attitudes to foreign IP (significantly American) have led to the well-documented instances of transfer by direct theft, espionage and/or counterfeiting of physical goods. Foreign IP is extremely difficult to protect and to seek enforcement against within the Chinese legal framework, which is heavily biased towards Chinese companies and local IP.
"The Commission regards changing the cost-benefit calculus for foreign entities that steal American intellectual property to be its principal policy focus6", this means changing the underlying conditions that allow unchecked IP theft to be profitable. The view is held that it must become so unprofitable to potential IP thieves not just in monetary terms but from the denial of potential access to US markets, finances, international trade programs etc.
The Commission also stated three sets of recommendations that are based on future timeframes and escalating commitment both internally of and externally to the USA and the wider global community7.
Short-term measures, including:
· Designate the national security advisor as the principal policy coordinator for all actions on the protection of American IP
· Strengthen the International Trade Commission's 337 process to sequester goods containing stolen IP
· Increase Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation resources to investigate and prosecute cases of trade-secret theft, especially those enabled by cyber means
Medium-term measures, including:
· Amend the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) to provide a federal private right of action for trade-secret theft
· Instruct the Federal trade Commission (FTC) to obtain meaningful sanctions against foreign companies using stolen IP
· Strengthen American diplomatic priorities in the protection of American IP
Long-term measures, including:
· Build institutions in priority countries that contribute towards a "rule of law" environment in ways that protect IP
· Develop a program that encourages technological innovation to improve the ability to detect counterfeit goods
· Develop IP "centers of excellence" on a regional basis within China and other priority countries
While these measures are by no means limited to those above or cast in stone, this report articulates a need for the USA and its’ key trading partners to seriously consider systemic changes to reduce and mitigate the effects of IP theft beyond specific legislation and industry-focused programs.
IP underpins all manufacturing, all devices, and all things; from medicines, household white goods, automotive parts, battlefield communications systems, environmental control hardware, IT software, recorded music etc., and will only increase in strategic importance as the global economy becomes more interconnected, utilised and competitive.
Whether we like it or not, the future of New Zealand from an economic/security perspective is inexorably linked to the United States of America and the Peoples’ Republic of China; as both as serious foreign investors in our nation, their internal markets have been targeted for increased access by NZ developed products/services and both are the Pacific region powerbrokers.
Any efforts on behalf of the United States of America to protect their IP can only be beneficial for New Zealand both directly from an internal IPR compliance perspective and as an end-consumer market, both now and well into the future.
To read the full report, go here.
References:
1 http://www.ipcommission.org/mission/index.html
2 http://www.ipcommission.org/mission/index.html
3 http://www.ipcommission.org/Commissioners/index.html
4 Page 1, Executive Summary, the Report.
5 Page 3, Executive Summary, the Report.
6 Page 4, The Commission's Strategy, the Report.
7 Page 4, Recommendations, the Report.
AUCKLAND, 10 July, 2013 – The American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand has today announced the finalists for the 2013 AmCham-DHL Express Success and Innovation Awards, the 14th year of these awards celebrating success and innovation for companies doing business with the USA.
Mike Hearn, Executive Director for AmCham, says 2013 has seen another strong group of entrants, covering diverse range of products and services. These include cars, furniture, technologies, plant research, foods, liquor, agricultural equipment, healthcare devices, wind turbines, biotech and tourism.
“I am always amazed at the success so many innovative New Zealand companies are having in the US market and while trade with the USA continues to run around $9 billion pa, we are still seeing a great deal of interest by New Zealand companies looking to establish themselves there” says Mr Hearn.
Tim Baxter, country manager DHL Express New Zealand further highlights the interest in the US market.
“In the recent Export Barometer survey conducted by DHL, it found that the US was the second major export destination behind Australia. Fifty per cent (50%) of exporters shipped goods there in the last 12 months.
“Despite the challenges of the strong kiwi dollar it is very encouraging to see these innovative companies making headway in this market. And we do everything we can to support exporters with our dedicated team of US trade lane specialists at DHL,” says Mr Baxter.
The finalists are:
Importer of the Year
- BMW Group New Zealand Ltd
- Cavit & Co Limited
- First In Ltd
Exporter of the Year to the USA $1 to $500,000
- C-Dax Ltd
- Merlot Aero
- Plant Research NZ Ltd
- TranscribeMe
- Vend
Exporter of the Year to the USA $500,001 to $5m
- Anagenix Ltd
- Escape International Ltd
- Greenshell New Zealand Ltd
- SnapComms
- Windflow Technology
Exporter of the Year to the USA over $5m
- Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Ltd
- Independent Liquor (NZ) Ltd
- Jack Links New Zealand Ltd
- Mount Cook Alpine Salmon Ltd
- TRU-TEST Ltd
One of the above will be chosen as the Supreme winner. Each of the above winners receives an receives a return economy Class ticket on Hawaiian Airlines from Auckland to either, Honolulu, Maui, The Big Island, Kauai, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Portland, Phoenix, Sacramento or New York.
Two other awards will be presented on the night:
Investor of the Year to or from the USA
- Emulex Inc
- Fletcher Building Ltd
- Foley Family Wines
- Plant & Food Research
AmCham Supporter of the Year
The awards will be presented at a black tie gala dinner at the Pullman Hotel Auckland on 8th August. For details and tickets see www.amcham.co.nz
In addition to AmCham, DHL Express and Hawaiian Airlines, the awards are supported by Baldwins, Fonterra and Prescient Marketing & Communications.
Previous winners of the Supreme Award have included Zespri International, Peace Software, Airways Corporation, HumanWare, Tenon, Orion Health, Zeacom, SMI Group, Fonterra and Pratt & Whitney Air New Zealand Services t/a Christchurch Engine Centre, Buckley Systems and Vista Entertainment.
Lima, Peru – During the 17th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, which ended today, officials reported that they continued to forge ahead toward their goal of concluding an ambitious 21st-century agreement in the timeframe envisioned by President Obama and the Leaders of the other ten TPP countries. Through the TPP, the United States is seeking to advance a next-generation trade and investment agreement that will enhance U.S. competitiveness, expand U.S. trade in the Asia-Pacific region, and support the creation and retention of U.S. jobs, while at the same time promoting labor rights, environmental protection, and transparency.
In their work during this 10-day round, negotiators were guided by the plan of action agreed by the trade ministers from the United States and the other TPP countries – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam – when they met last month on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Surabaya, Indonesia. In line with that plan and the direction of ministers to find pragmatic solutions to outstanding issues, the negotiators made progress across the agreement. The negotiating groups covering services, government procurement, sanitary and phytosanitary standards, trade remedies, labor, and dispute settlement moved their work forward significantly. The TPP countries also successfully advanced work on the other legal texts, including technical barriers to trade, e-commerce, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, transparency, competition, environment and other issues. On the more challenging issues of intellectual property, competition, and environment, negotiators had productive discussions and agreed on next steps to continue their work.
In addition, negotiators made further progress on building the comprehensive packages that will provide access to their respective markets for industrial, agricultural and textile and apparel products, services and investment, and government procurement. They moved forward in constructing tariff packages and rules of origin, reflecting input from stakeholders on how best to promote trade and regional integration that would benefit the companies and workers in the United States and the other TPP countries.
The 11 TPP countries discussed plans for smoothly integrating Japan into the TPP negotiations. Japan will join the negotiations following the successful completion of current members’ respective domestic processes. With Japan’s entry, TPP countries will account for nearly 40 percent of global GDP and about one-third of all world trade.
On May 19th, the TPP negotiations were temporarily suspended so negotiators could meet with the 300 stakeholders from the United States and other TPP countries. Stakeholders presented views to negotiators on a wide range of issues under discussion in the TPP, and met informally with U.S. and other negotiators to provide further input to them. Barbara Weisel, U.S. chief TPP negotiator, and the chief negotiators from the other 10 countries also briefed stakeholders on the status of the negotiations and responded to their questions on specific issues and the process going forward.
Ministers from the TPP countries will continue to engage regularly over the coming months to guide the negotiators’ work, find solutions to outstanding sensitive issues, and ensure that the negotiations achieve the TPP Leaders’ objective of a high-quality, ambitious, and comprehensive agreement this year. Meanwhile, the negotiating teams agreed on detailed intersessional work plans so that the momentum achieved during this week’s round in Lima can be maintained.
The 18th round of TPP negotiations will be held in Malaysia from July 15th-25th.
Thank you for being here.
It's great to be back in Washington, and to see so many friends of New Zealand here today.
I attended the first of these forums in April 2006 and each subsequent gathering.
I want to reflect briefly on how the role of this Forum has changed, just as the NZ/US relationship has changed and continues to change.
In thanking all of those who have contributed to the success and evolution of this gathering over the past seven years, it is only honest to observe that the Forum was created at a time when the formal relationship between our two countries was suboptimal.
The Forum in 2006 was a vehicle to supplement it.
In particular I want to thank our American friends who gave up their time and spent their capital in order to invest in the NZ/US relationship.
And I want to acknowledge the significant role the Forum has played in achieving the substantial transition in NZ/US relations that has occurred in recent years.
We live in a different world in 2013.
Formal relations between our two countries are excellent.
We have found a new normal.
Last year we hosted 100 marines in New Zealand to thank the US for your support at a critical time in World War II and to engage in several weeks of exercises. Joint exercises are now routine.
And this month, for the first time in nearly 30 years, a New Zealand Navy vessel will visit a US military port in Guam - another milestone in the normalisation of that aspect of NZ/US relations.
So unlike some previous occasions, I do not intend to talk at length about the relationship.
Just as couples tend to spend a good deal of time talking about their relationship when they have issues, I do not intend to do so, because we do not have issues.
Just as the formal relationship is now one in which we spend our time talking about the opportunities to work together and add value, so too must the role of this Forum change.
That is especially true as we stand at the threshold of TPP, as my colleague Tim Groser will discuss tomorrow.
So I want to reflect very briefly on a few of New Zealand's wider foreign policy concerns and focus on how our two countries are adding value, and can continue to add value, by working together.
First I want to identify, especially for American friends, just how much New Zealand has changed in the seven years since this Forum first met in 2006.
For all of our history we have regarded our geography - far away from our traditional markets in Europe - as our major strategic disadvantage.
Now we live in the Asia Pacific Century and our geography, on the rim of Asia, has become our major strategic advantage.
Seven years ago our exports to China were less than NZ$2 billion, well behind Australia and the US.
Today, our exports to China top NZ$7 billion, and in the first quarter of 2013 they actually passed, temporarily I am sure, exports to our largest market, Australia.
In South East Asia our exports are nearly NZ$4.5 billion a year - about the same as the US, but rising sharply from NZ$2.9 billion in 2006.
In both cases, China and ASEAN, high quality FTAs have provided the impetus.
But the improvements in trade and economic relations have also been mirrored by a boost to diplomatic relations, and in education, tourism, cultural and sporting exchanges.
We invest heavily in our diplomatic relations in the region and are unashamedly proud of our good relationships.
In that sense I should acknowledge that being small certainly helps - but to the word small I hope we could add others, like professional, respectful, constructive and friendly.
I know that some will ask whether success in our relationship with China has been at the cost of our commitment to core values like democracy and human rights, or to important matters like the contested South China Sea.
I want to be clear that we do not try to paper over differences in our perspectives on such issues.
We discuss them openly and honestly - but respectfully and constructively.
Where we have different methods of working, we try to understand each other.
That is the reason we now partner with China in an aid project in the Pacific, and have agreed to discuss wider development cooperation.
We have been extremely supportive of the US decision in recent years to invest more heavily in Asia, and especially the decision to join the regional conversations at the East Asia Summit.
And we believe the decisions we have both made to become more invested in Asia provide a range of new opportunities for close cooperation.
This sort of cooperation will be a key feature of my meeting with Secretary Kerry today, as it will be at the NZ/US Strategic Dialogue among senior officials later this week.
We believe that closer US engagement in Asia, including through TPP, will make the region both more prosperous and more secure.
Elsewhere in the world there are also opportunities for us to add value through greater cooperation.
The existing high level of cooperation in the Pacific, in South East Asia, in Afghanistan, in Antarctica and the Ross Sea, is well known to this audience.
But I hope the enhanced dialogue we now have will see us cooperate in new places.
Here I do not mean to gloss over the obvious differences in size and weight.
I want to acknowledge the obvious but often unstated fact that the world so frequently expects the US as the only global superpower to carry the cost, both in cash and in casualties, of preserving stability and security in the trouble spots of the world.
But just as there are so many things that only the US can do because you are large and powerful, there are others that countries like New Zealand can do only because we are not.
I take this opportunity to commend Secretary Kerry for the significant attention he has brought to the Middle East Peace Process.
New Zealand has, with others, been calling for the strongest US leadership on this matter, as the window for a two-state solution draws dangerously more closed.
But we are not asking you to do it alone.
We all have a huge stake in defusing the dispute that carries the seeds of wider conflict in the region and beyond.
New Zealand has been engaged in the MFO, maintaining peace in the Sinai for over 30 years, and one of our generals is currently in command.
We are engaged in a demining project on the West Bank, because we have worked hard to maintain the trust of both Israelis and Palestinians.
We even provide rugby coaching to teams in both Jerusalem and Ramallah.
New Zealand and many other countries want to actively support Secretary Kerry in finding a way to achieve a two-state settlement in the Middle East in the narrow window that is left.
Finally, I turn to our own region, the Pacific.
Making our contribution to maintaining stability and security in a Pacific that suffers significantly at the hands of both the Global Financial Crisis and climate change is a major preoccupation.
The region consumes around 60 per cent of our aid budget and a good deal of diplomatic time and energy.
A leadership role in the Pacific is a key aspect of our international personality, and an essential element of our value proposition to our friends and partners.
Our key objective in recent months has been to move the region from about 5 per cent of electricity generated from renewable means to around 50 per cent in the next five years.
Currently diesel to generate electricity makes up around 10 per cent of the GDP of Pacific countries and around 25 per cent of their total import bills.
In partnership with the EU, we have just hosted a conference of donors to assemble NZ$635 million to support the 40 projects that would move the region close to the 50 per cent mark.
Maintaining security and stability in the region is a responsibility we share especially with our Australian friends.
With partners, we have now completed lengthy commitments in both the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste, with the focus now moving from security to development.
We currently chair the Forum's Ministerial Contact Group on Fiji.
We visited Suva last month and will visit again in July.
I am confident there will be elections in Fiji in 2014 - the question now being asked is whether they will be free and fair.
We continue to walk the fine line that sees us remaining engaged and supporting the elections process, whilst continuing to ask the questions the international community would expect to be asked about the quality of that process.
This is indeed a complex task, and it is pleasing that our region remains able to deal with such a significant challenge in such a cooperative way.
We have worked very closely with the US over the past two years to complete the US Pacific Tuna Treaty re-negotiation.
We are almost there.
A healthy tuna fishery is arguably the most valuable asset the region currently owns.
Around US$2.8 billion per year of tuna is taken from the EEZs of the 14 Pacific nations.
Around US$200 million finds its way back to the nations that own the resource.
We are working hard to improve these percentages and the US Tuna Treaty will be an important step in that direction.
About US$500 million of tuna a year is taken from the Pacific zone illegally.
The US, in cooperation with Australia, France and New Zealand, plays an important part in improving surveillance and management of the region.
New Zealand greatly values the more prominent US interest in the Pacific Islands.
The attendance of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders' meeting in the Cook Islands last year was a powerful signal of US engagement in the region.
I look forward to my discussions with Secretary Kerry later this morning, where cooperation in the Pacific features on our agenda, including of course, this year's Pacific Islands Forum Leaders' meeting, which will take place in Majuro, in the Marshall Islands, one of the US Compact states.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have come a long way in the seven years since this Forum first met.
With TPP on the horizon there is a long way further to go.
I wish you well in your deliberations today.
US-NZ Awards Give Winners Tangible Benefits; 2-way Trade Worth Over $8 billion
Companies trading with the United States are invited to enter the 2013 American Chamber of Commerce – DHL Express Success & Innovation Awards, held in conjunction with Hawaiian Airline. Over the last thirteen years prizes valued at more than $300,000 have been collected by winners.
The awards celebrate business achievement between New Zealand and its third largest trading partner, the United States.
AmCham is delighted to welcome Hawaiian Airlines as a major supporter of these awards. AmCham’s Executive Director Mike Hearn commented that is good to see a US carrier back in New Zealand and engaging with business.
The winners receives a return economy Class ticket on Hawaiian Airlines from Auckland to either, Honolulu, Maui, The Big Island, Kauai, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Portland, Phoenix, Sacramento or New York.
Award winners will be announced at a gala dinner at the Pullman Hotel Auckland on 8th August.
Two-way trade between New Zealand and the USA is currently running at more than $8 billion, which accounts for approximately 10% per cent of New Zealand’s total earnings from overseas trade.
AmCham works closely with its members and companies trading with the USA to enhance and expand business and trade relationships within the private and public sectors.
"The annual Success & Innovation Awards provide an opportunity to showcase those companies that have demonstrated imagination, innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as honour and celebrate their achievements."
Awards categories are:
- Exporter of the Year to the USA - with export revenues to the USA up to NZ $500,000
- Exporter of the Year to the USA - revenues from NZ $501,000 to NZ $5 million and
- Exporter of the Year to the USA - revenues over NZ $5 million
- Importer of the Year from the USA
- Investor of the Year for New Zealand companies investing in the US, as well as US companies investing in New Zealand
A Supreme Award winner is selected from winners of each of these awards.
AmCham also makes an award to the Supporter of the Year.
Companies interested in entering the 2013 awards can find further information at www.amcham.co.nz or by contacting Mr Hearn – email mike@amcham.co.nz or phone 09 309 9140. Entries close at 5.00 pm on 14 June. Finalists will be announced on 10 July and the winners announced at the black tie awards dinner on 8th August.
Previous winners of the Supreme Award have included ZESPRI International, Peace Software, Airways Corporation, HumanWare, Tenon, Orion Systems International, Zeacom, Specialist Marine Interiors, Fonterra and Christchurch Engine Centre, Buckley Systems and Vista Entertainment.
In addition to AmCham, DHL Express and Hawaiian Airlines, the awards are supported by: Baldwins, Fonterra Co-operative, and Prescient
Marketing & Communications
Let me start with a statement of principle. It’s about the relatively open trade and payments system that we have inherited. It has flaws and shortcomings. There are many vulnerable developing countries at early stages of development that have yet to enjoy its real benefits. For all that, this relatively open system has served three generations of our predecessors well.
This is not just an economic evaluation, though certainly the economic benefits of a system that protects export jobs around the globe, that protects and enhances the value of investments in agriculture, industrial goods and services linked into the global value chain are front and centre of the matter.
But it is more than that. There is a huge political return that comes as part of the deal. The decision of any nation to join the WTO, or the GATT before it, or any number of the new emerging regional trade and investment agreements, is a decision to abide by a system of international norms. These are often, and I think accurately, described as the ‘international rule set’. That has a vital political character.
Let’s be clear about one thing. Joining the international rule set is not like turning on a light. One day your country is outside the system playing fast and loose; the next day you are inside and you switch on the new international rule set and everything is clarified and everyone plays by the rules. No, it is not that simple. It is as much about the culture of observing a set of international rules and norms. With new entrants, this may take a little time.
With long established entrants, there is equally ample scope for cynics to point out the obvious gaps between ‘talking the talk and walking the walk’. But to put it mildly, no political system, domestic or international, works seamlessly - without jagged periods of disruption and inaction before a new consensus emerges on how it can move forward again. So, with all the qualifications we need to bear in mind, this relatively open trading system, of which the WTO is still the central point of reference, is a system that works. It is also, I insist, a system that is in trouble and worth fighting for.
A decision to participate in taking on international obligations, which will involve change, increased competition in your domestic market and new regulatory frameworks, is not an easy debate to manage in any country.
The most recent major economy to join the WTO was Russia. It took 18 years of negotiation, no doubt immensely frustrating for all the negotiators from the various countries who were involved. We also know it ended with a difficult and deeply contentious political debate to get the implementing legislation through the Dumas. Some Russian legislators even threatened – how serious it was I do not know – to try some of the Russian negotiators for treason. The after-shocks of this have not yet passed through their system domestically or internationally. Why should we expect it to be otherwise? Joining the international rule set is not, as I said, like flicking on a light switch that clarifies everything on day one.
It is no different with regional trade agreements. Consider Japan’s decision to request participation in TPP, one of the most recent decisions of real global consequence. The existing TPP members have set a high bar for participation in TPP – I am referring to the Leaders’ Statement of November 2011, chaired by President Obama in Honolulu and which sets out the objectives of TPP in very clear terms. This was, of course, prior to the entry of Mexico and Canada and prior to the formal request just received from the Government of Japan.
If I may return to an analogy I have used previously, we have decided to be rather formal and set in place a strict economic dress code for TPP. If you are only comfortable in loafers, jeans and tee shirts, fine, we get it. But please don’t knock at the door of this club. Jacket and tie are required inside. We have good reasons for this, borne out of experience with second rate FTAs.
We know this has not been an easy decision for Japan, a great economic power with which all TPP members, large and small, want to intensify their trade and investment linkages. It has taken over two years and intense consideration by successive Japanese Governments to make the decision to move from indications of ‘interest’ to a formal request to participate. Personally, I think this is a good sign. At the minimum, it indicates that Japanese leaders - in politics, the bureaucracy, business and other stakeholders - understand participation in TPP is not a small decision.
So none of this – whether it is about the WTO, TPP or other major regional agreements - is easy. It is heavy sledging politically because it is about change. And when it is about change, we all understand it is so much easier to identify likely losers from economic change than likely winners.
Trade of course is not the only source of economic change. Exactly the same applies to change from introducing new technologies, which can also be disruptive and therefore extremely controversial. There is an old saying that if certain people had been around when Benjamin Franklin invented electricity, they would have been opposed to it because of its adverse consequences for candle-makers. Don’t for a minute think that this is taking the matter to extremes. The Luddites were, you may recall, a group who burned mills and factory equipment in the early 19th Century in England over precisely this point.
Trade is about specialization, and specialization is the basis for higher productivity, higher wages, and material progress; open but well regulated markets domestically and internationally are necessary to make this happen. We also need a few folk in the right places to defend that proposition.
The evidence for that proposition is overwhelming. A group of international institutions, including the OECD, WTO and the ILO, recently completed an exhaustive study of the all the empirical research, covering studies done in dozens of countries, developed and developing, to look at the linkages between trade and growth. It concluded with a somewhat acerbic comment. One rarely sees acerbic, less still ironic, comments coming out of international institutions:
“Despite all the debate about whether openness [on trade] contributes to growth, if the issue were truly one warranting nothing but agnosticism, we should expect at least some of the estimates to be negative…The uniformly positive estimates suggest that the relevant terms of the debate by now should be about the size of the positive influence of openness on growth….rather than about whether increased levels of trade relative to GDP have a positive effect on productivity and growth”.
That’s what the evidence tells us, and societies that do not base their policies on evidence-based political, social and economic analysis are societies that go nowhere. But at the same time, this alone is too austere a message to sell to the general public.
Believe me: I understand this. It is eight years since I left the WTO in Geneva, where I was chairing the Agriculture Negotiations, in order to become a politician. I call this decision to go into domestic politics, ‘crossing over to the dark side’. And frankly, since I took that step, for precisely the point I have just made, in all the speeches, interviews and comments I have made on trade, I have never once said in New Zealand - “Vote for me: I’m in favour of Free Trade”. To slightly rephrase Oscar Wilde’s observation, there are so many ways to screw up in politics, why should you take the most obvious exit strategy?
I have talked about the sensitivity of this issue in Russia and Japan. Let’s carry on putting refined diplomatic politesse to one side and talk about the United States.
Ron Kirk, with whom I have had such a great relationship over the years that he has had stewardship of USTR, claims that there are polls in this great country that show more Americans believe in flying saucers than free trade. I am sure he is right, though I would like to see the way the question was put.
Trade has been controversial in the United States for all the 30 odd years I have been involved in it. I recall the immense difficulty President Clinton, in his first term, had getting Fast Track Negotiating Authority from Congress – in fact he didn’t get it. I recall the huge struggle to get the NAFTA through Congress by a handful of votes and that was over 20 years ago. So to keep matters simple: getting political support for open trade policies is neither a new nor a simple issue in this country either.
Actually, considerable progress has been made in recent years in getting the trade debate here on a far sounder footing. I think there is a better understanding of the linkage between exports and jobs, and better paid jobs at that. But it is also true that real action, not just talk, has been taken in Washington in advancing the trade agenda. I am thinking particularly about the three FTAs – Korus, Colombia and Peru – that went through Congress, and by a healthy margin.
A simple conclusion arises. For all the talk about gridlock inside the Beltway, we know that done the right way, on trade at least there is indeed a way to get solid bipartisan support in Washington when it is needed. I have no doubt this can be attained again – when and if there is a solid, balanced and ambitious deal to be considered in the Washington political process.
This is worth remembering when we consider the near paralysis in the Geneva negotiations. To those who say this is impossible, my first order question is very direct – ‘I know there is nothing on the horizon, but why should you consider it impossible?’
I am a veteran of the Uruguay Round where I was our chief negotiator. This was the Round that was meant to finish in four years and took seven. I have in my files at home, waiting for the book I will never write, many articles along the lines – “the only people who believe the Uruguay Round is not dead are a group of officials with a vested interest in going to meetings in Geneva to collect their per diems”. A great line, but how wrong that proved to be. This was before we found an agreed way to recalibrate the negotiations, and aim for a bigger deal, not a smaller deal.
Let us first deal with the obvious canard – that the underlying reason the Doha Round in the WTO is such heavy going is best explained by that ‘90s cliché: ‘it’s the economy, stupid’.
Certainly, we have just gone through the worst international economic crisis in 70 years; some developed countries have got unemployment comparable on some measures to what they experienced in the Great Depression. With unemployment among young people reaching a tragic 50% in some European countries there is potentially a lost generation in the making. And so, the argument goes, this is the worst time to expect Governments to advance the international frontier of trade and investment integration.
It all sounds perfectly plausible as an explanation. The only problem is that it is obviously wrong.
Far from Governments, including European Governments, shying away from trade agreements, there is an explosion of interest right around the world in negotiating trade and investment agreements of which the latest, and potential game-changer, is the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations between the United States and the European Union. The reality is that it is all happening regionally. One or two baby steps aside, none of it is happening multilaterally.
Before we examine the state of play in the WTO – I have more than a passing interest in this matter, as some of you may be aware – let’s look at this explosion of interest in negotiating trade deals and try to see what patterns are there.
First, Governments have negotiated these deals or are proposing new deals because growth and jobs are hard to come by and trade is a source of growth. When people talk about the EU/US deal perhaps adding 0.5% to 1% growth to annual GDP, we are all saying – ‘Snap. Thank you very much. We’ll take that’. I sense the clearest convergence of views in years in my numerous discussions with Ministers and senior officials around the world on this point. That trade is seen as a source of growth is an old truth, but today there is a new clarity and a new urgency about it.
Second, in terms of the quality of these agreements, there is a new mood to go shopping for deals uptown. Sure, you can go downtown and rummage around the trade policy flea markets of the 1990s and find many counterfeit, second-rate FTAs from that era, but today we are going uptown and we are going for quality.
This applies clearly to new negotiations underway – TPP and the Trans-Atlantic Partnership clearly envisage high quality, comprehensive agreements that do a lot more than just deal with tariffs. But it also applies to deals that have been completed and are in the process of implementation. Certainly, the FTAs that my country has recently concluded have all been extremely high quality, comprehensive agreements – including the FTA we have with China, which is going extremely well since it came into force in 2008.
Third, the central characteristic of many of these regional agreements is that they are collapsing previous bilateral FTAs, or trade agreements by other names such as ‘closer economic partnership agreements’, into larger and larger agglomerations of trade and investment integration. In the process, we are cleaning up the ‘spaghetti in the bowl’ – a problem about trade rule complexity that was always real but, in my view, over-hyped. In any event, we are sorting out the problem now.
I call this trend towards wider and wider regional trade agreements ‘convergence’. It is not a new phenomenon. The EU was perhaps the first pioneer here. In the early 1970s, Western Europe had a Customs Union involving six European countries including France, Italy and Germany. But there was also a geographically contiguous Free Trade Area called EFTA led by the fourth European large economy, the UK.
When the UK entered the then EEC in 1973, along with two other smaller EFTA economies, one could say with only a little exaggeration, that the two regional trade agreements ‘collapsed’ into one wider zone of economic integration, at least with respect to the EFTA countries concerned. And of course, since then, the EU has gone on to reach 27 countries carrying with its own rule set which is not just about economic integration. It also underwrites the subtle political progress across Central and Eastern Europe of the growth of democracy, peace and respect for the rule of law and human rights.
Let us not forget: it was a political, not an economic, agenda that led the two great visionaries – Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet of France to propose to Germany the foundation stone of today’s European Union - an iron and steel community. Thus was started a process of binding together two countries that had fought three disastrous wars in the previous 70 years, two of which turned into World Wars.
North America is itself an exemplar of convergent FTAs. The earlier Canada/US FTA did not last long; it collapsed into the wider NAFTA involving the Mexican economy. If TPP works as we have designed it, even the NAFTA will, for all intents and purposes, be ‘collapsed’ into the new wider Asia-Pacific grouping that is TPP, even if the NAFTA continues to have a juridical and administrative life for certain purposes.
Australia and New Zealand signed a comprehensive FTA, called the CER Agreement, in 1983 – that is where I cut my teeth as a negotiator. It was justly considered the gold standard of the day, though curiously it never even occurred to us to include services. We did that later in 1988.
But our bilateral agreement too is being merged, at least in some important respects, with the ASEAN, or South East Asian FTA known as AFTA. This is not a proposal that we are not talking about doing. We have done it. It is being implemented. In some ten years time, we will have one large zone of trade and investment integration in the geographic centre of the Asia Pacific region involving twelve economies and 570 million people. Two of those economies – Indonesia and Australia – each has a GDP over US$1 trillion and Indonesia, with 240 million people growing at 6% per annum is poised to become a huge economy. The rules of origin of this 12-country FTA are region-wide. This is not some minor point of interest only to trade technicians. It means that the preferences are based on the emerging supply chain connectivity of the countries concerned.
Similar developments are afoot in Latin America. Mercosur, based on Brazil and Argentina, now has a rival. The new kid on the block is called ‘The Pacific Alliance’. Currently, it involves Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia. NZ, like the US, already has an FTA with Chile and of course Mexico, Peru and Chile are all involved in TPP.
We have been watching with growing interest and growing respect for their achievements the fourth country, Colombia. This is a country with a population about the size of Argentina. My Prime Minister has just agreed in principle with President Santos in Bogotá to negotiate an FTA. So we are a step behind you here since you have an FTA in place, but we are on track. These four Latin countries of the Pacific Alliance strike us as outward looking, and they speak the language of trade, economic integration and political progress. Each of the four has an FTA with each other. The Pacific Alliance is now intended to merge these in what trade policy wonks call ‘a deep integration model’.
I could continue with many other examples, but the central points are, I think, clear.
First, it is blindingly obvious that there is no ‘turning away’ from trade and investment integration taking place because of tough economic times. Not at all, there is an explosion of interest in such agreements. So whatever lies behind the problem in Geneva, it is not ‘tough times’. It is a deeper malaise there that we have to come to grips with.
Second, it is ‘game on’ in terms of quality. We don’t need the second rate FTAs of the 1990s. We want comprehensive, high quality agreements that absolutely deal with traditional trade problems of the 20th Century such as holdout pockets of high tariff protection but which also deal with issues such as regulatory convergence in a serious way. These two complementary agendas lie at the centre of the objectives of the two massive convergent regional agreements the United States is now involved in – both TPP and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement.
Third, we are cleaning up the spaghetti in the bowl by collapsing numerous bilateral FTAs into wider and wider zones of trade and investment integration.
So what about the WTO?
I think there are some very obvious lessons here. First if the frenetic behaviour I have just described is what the political competition is doing at the regional level, and we want the multilateral system to keep up, we are going to have to start to think about how to do a bigger deal in Geneva, not a smaller deal.
I think it is tragic but true, given the importance of the WTO and the multilateral trading system, that people are bored with this negotiation. In all human affairs, that matters. Geneva is, as I argued to the WTO Members during my presentation a few weeks ago, no longer the ‘go-to’ place for trade policy. We have to turn that around. New thinking is now required. In saying this, I am making here a simple political and finally an intuitive judgment.
Since 2003, after the disastrous Cancun WTO Ministerial meeting where a group of issues called ‘the Singapore Issues’ fell off the back of the political truck, we have been reducing, not increasing, the size of the deal.
Faute de mieux, we are set on this track for Bali at the end of this year and I absolutely agree that this is the only plausible scenario now facing us. It is far, far too late to re-calibrate the strategy now and the new Director General, whoever she or he is, will have to hit the ground running on 1 September to make it work. The broad political contours of any possible package at Bali are already clear.
But at the outermost limits of optimism about what Bali might or might not deliver, there is still a mountain to climb and we will never climb that mountain by slicing and dicing the existing Single Undertaking into tiny packets to be digested every two years at Ministerial meetings. It would take us decades. Do the math. Furthermore, the target is not a fixed one. What might politically have cut the mustard in, say, 2006, has moved on because the world has moved on.
Second crucial caveat: if we are ever to move beyond taking baby steps we should have a completely open mind about the way forward. In presenting my vision to the WTO Membership when I made my pitch for the Director-General position, I said ‘I am not a man with a Plan; I have perhaps a dozen different scenarios in mind’. I quoted the great Prussian strategist, Field Marshall von Moltke, who famously said two centuries ago ‘No battle plan survives the first encounter with the enemy’. The only that is fixed are your objectives.
The Director General of the WTO is in a very unusual position. He or she is not like the President of the World Bank or the Executive Director of the IMF, both of whom are decision-makers, both of whom have billions of dollars, conditionality, and access to capital markets to use as leverage to advance the objectives of their institutions. The DG of the WTO does not decide anything, other than management issues concerning the Secretariat. There is no pot of gold to lubricate the process. It is all about skills, networks, creativity and facilitation. It is a tough job. Really tough.
Nor is it an intellectual problem we are trying to solve here. It is a political problem. There would probably be twenty or thirty people in this town alone with the requisite knowledge and experience to put together a plausible ‘Plan’ to resuscitate the Geneva negotiations: country A gives more on that issue, country B responds by reciprocating on some other issue, some additional technical assistance to this group of countries facilitates their agreement on this or that issue and so on. It is not hard to write such a plan. Done well, it would be elegant and well informed. It would also be completely irrelevant.
Any plan that is going to work has to be built up piece by piece through consensus. It cannot be delivered ex-cathedra by the Director General who then calls for a vote on it. Alexander Hamilton famously said “Men will often oppose a thing simply because they have had no hand in its making”.
Nor is this going to be done by some intellectually challenging but futile idea of abandoning the existing mandate, junking the term ‘Development Round’ and starting from scratch. After all the work that has been put into this negotiation, it would take years before parties would be prepared to sit down even to begin a formal discussion about a new mandate, such would be the cynicism and bitterness that would set it.
There would be huge and utterly justifiable suspicion that this was intended to set aside major, unresolved twentieth century trade problems of legitimate concern not just to many developing WTO Members but to countries like NZ. The most obvious of these is the huge overhang of trade and production-distorting agriculture subsidies that are central to many of these countries’ concerns.
Then, even if you could get past that deep well of cynicism and bitterness, the idea that you could negotiate a new mandate that would pre-negotiate the most controversial issues is completely naïve. A mandate sets objectives and directions, but ambiguity is built into every negotiation mandate. That, in some ways is the point of it: if there were no ambiguity about the result, there would be no need for a negotiation.
If we are going to have a bigger deal, a more interesting deal, a more relevant deal, it will have to be put together discreetly with a lot of reflection and taking full account of the existing mandate. To do that, it will be vital that the new Director General has the confidence of all the Members – not just this ‘group’ or that ‘group’ of countries.
It will have to be done discreetly. I have said to trade journalists in Geneva, and let me admit to a certain degree of perverse pleasure, that if I were to become Director General, I would be a ‘trade journalists’ nightmare’. OK - it is a deliberate exaggeration on my part in order to make a broader point. Actually, in public the Director General needs to be a forceful public advocate of the system, leading intellectual and political discussion on why we need a system of multilateral rules. And we need the help of the world’s media to achieve that.
But when it comes to the sensitive negotiating issues, I believe the Director General must be completely silent in public and open to many different solutions. There is never one, unique solution to any problem in trade negotiations.
But whatever the specific solutions may be – and I am certain there are many different possible paths – after Bali, we need to start thinking bigger, not smaller. That is not only what the competition is doing with this explosion of far-reaching regional agreements such as the EU/US announcement or the Pacific Alliance in Latin America. These are not baby steps being discussed regionally. It is also the enduring lesson from the last successful multilateral Round, the Uruguay Round. We faced exactly this conundrum with the last negotiating Round and the only way we got that over the line was shifting direction towards a larger deal.
If you compare the actual results of the Uruguay Round with the original Punta del Este negotiating mandate, you will not see any suggestion of an entirely new institution – the WTO – in the mandate. I do not recall anything that foreshadowed an internationally binding new dispute settlement process with an Appellate Body at the top.
In the negotiations at official level leading up to the formal launch of the Uruguay Round in 1986, I was asked to write the mandate for the textiles and apparel negotiations, precisely because New Zealand was seen as a neutral party in a then bitterly contested part of the system. I can assure you that when I achieved informal consensus on that mandate, there was no way I thought this was going to lead to the end of the discriminatory system of quotas among developing countries called the MFA, or ‘Multi-fiber Agreement’.
And as for the General Agreement on Trade in Services, or the GATS, well, as my professors used to say in setting assignments, ‘compare and contrast’ the result – a separate new agreement - with the timid language of the services mandate. I know what Sherlock Holmes said on this matter – “From a single drop of rain one can infer the presence of oceans”. Intellectually, I get the point, but in 1986 you would indeed need to have been the ‘world’s greatest detective’ to have detected the existence of the GATS from the original negotiating mandate.
None of this movement up the quality chain after the palpable failure of the first four years of negotiation was forced on anyone. It was all done skilfully, discreetly and through consensus. Can we do it again? I don’t know. It depends how worried people are about proceeding in the 21st Century without the bedrock of the multilateral trading system unifying the world economy.
Of course, some people assume this will never be at issue. We got through the 2009 crisis without major protectionist slippage. People take this relatively benign state of affairs for granted as if it were there rock-like, permanent and immutable as a defence against earlier irrationality and therefore needs no political investment or political maintenance. Aldous Huxley once said human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Precisely because regional integration is proceeding faster and deeper, we need to advance the frontier of multilateralism to keep up and maintain coherence among these regional groupings. I see these various regional trade blocks as large vessels floating on the now relatively benign seas of the multilateral trading system. Whenever I feel enthusiasm for the Asia Pacific (“the world’s most dynamic growth region” etc) is getting just a step ahead of reality, I like to pose the following question: “who is China’s largest trading partner?” The answer of course is the EU-27. We are all finally bound together and the rapid development of the global supply chain simply sharpens that reality. It is not called the global supply chain for nothing.
This is a system that still matters and it matters a lot. Even if you exclude intra-EU trade (and that is a huge amount of inter-country trade), some 70% of world trade still takes place on MFN or ‘multilateral’ rates. If the WTO were a huge corporation rather than a multilateral political institution, it would still be the market leader. But not having brought out any important new products or services for almost 20 years means its brand is losing its shine to its customers. Its judicial system is vital for all countries, including the largest of countries. Would that last indefinitely if the system of rules it is upholding were never refreshed? Sounds a little dangerous to me.
I also continue to believe that there are certain issues in trade policy that no regional trade agreement can deal with adequately – including subsidy peaks, contingency protection and such like. The EU/US announcement may test that judgment, of course. Maybe you and your European partners will decide, for example, to liberalize agriculture market access without doing anything about harmonizing subsidies across competing sectors; maybe you could do a bilateral deal on some subsidies and not worry about the free rider problem you would both then face from Japan and others with major non-Green box subsidies. Or maybe moving forward in Geneva on some re-calibrated basis would facilitate this all important and potentially game-changing negotiation across the Atlantic. It might even facilitate TPP.
One thing is certain. Yes, the United States is today facing a very different world from the world your predecessors faced in 1945. It is a far better world of course by any realistic measure of human progress.
After the War, the United States enjoyed a totally dominant share of world economic power as you faced your shattered rivals – the countries that were later to become your major partners. At that time, this single country could indeed do almost all of the heavy lifting on its own. And according to my view of history, the rest of the world benefited enormously from the non-punitive peace and the multilateral institutional machinery that an earlier generation of American political leadership put in place.
It is a mistake to say the system of multilateral trade, then underwritten by the GATT, was ‘invented’ by the United States. That would make Lord Keynes, who led the British Treasury negotiating team from 1942 through to the Bretton Woods Conference, turn in his grave. But the very least that can be said is that this system would never have come into being without political leadership from the United States. It is as I said, a system worth fighting for. If we can ever again find a creative way forward, I am sure you will be up for the fight.
Thank you.
From USTR
At the close of the 16th Round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations today, chief negotiators reported that they had achieved the goal set for the round: to put the negotiations on an accelerated track toward conclusion of a next-generation, comprehensive agreement in the 2013 time frame envisioned by President Obama and the Leaders of the ten other TPP countries.
Through the TPP, the United States is seeking to help establish a trade and investment framework that supports U.S. job creation by addressing the issues faced by U.S. stakeholders in the 21st-century, promoting U.S. competitiveness, and expanding U.S. trade in the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. The United States also is seeking to advance core U.S. values in the agreement, such as transparency, labor rights, and environmental protection.
U.S. Chief Negotiator and Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Barbara Weisel reports that building on the consensus the TPP countries have already achieved on a significant number of the issues under negotiation, during this round the 11 delegations intensified their drive to find mutually-acceptable paths forward on the remaining issues in the legal texts of the agreement. As a result of active intersessional engagement, and the pragmatism and flexibility shown by all countries during this round, the delegations succeeded in finding solutions to many issues in a wide range of areas such as customs, telecommunications, investment, services, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, intellectual property, regulatory coherence, development, and other issues. With this progress, some negotiating groups, including customs, telecommunications, regulatory coherence, and development will not meet again to discuss the legal texts in future rounds and any remaining work in these areas will be taken up in late-stage rounds as the agreement is finalized. This will allow the TPP countries to concentrate their efforts on resolving the most challenging issues that remain, including related to intellectual property, competition, and environment.
The 11 countries also made progress during this round in continuing to develop the comprehensive packages that will provide market access for goods, services and investment, and government procurement. Productive exchanges occurred on tariff packages on industrial goods, agriculture, and textiles, as well as on rules of origin and how best to promote the development of regional supply chains in order to benefit companies based in the United States and the other TPP countries. In addition, negotiators discussed each country’s proposals to open services and investment and government procurement markets. The 11 countries agreed on additional intersessional work to build on market access advances made since the last round, to continue movement toward outcomes consistent with the high level of ambition that Leaders agreed to seek.
On March 6, the TPP negotiations adjourned temporarily so that negotiators could engage with the more than 300 stakeholders from TPP countries who registered to join the stakeholder events in Singapore. In response to stakeholder requests, Singapore arranged both for direct stakeholder engagement with negotiators and for 60 stakeholders to make presentations on a wide variety of issues. Also that day, Weisel and fellow Chief Negotiators briefed stakeholders and took questions on the substance and process of the TPP talks.
In mid-April, TPP Trade Ministers will meet on the margins of the APEC Trade Ministers meeting in Surabaya, Indonesia to discuss progress to date and provide further guidance to negotiators. As the negotiations draw to a close, high-level officials will be more actively engaged with one another on ways to address the remaining sensitive issues.
The 17th round of TPP negotiations will be held in Lima, Peru, from May 15-24.
© American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand Inc • Site by HighlandCreative.com.au
