WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. president Barack Obama’s top Asia adviser has said the president’s request for trade promotion authority shows the administration’s goal is to complete a major trade pact with Asia this year.
“We are confident we can and we will get it done,” Evan Medeiros, senior director for Asia at the U.S. National Security Council, said recently when asked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“The president made very clear last night that TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) and TPP is now a top presidential priority and now is the time to get it done,” he said, referring to Obama’s Jan. 20 state of the union address.
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“The U.S. is, I think, in the end game of its negotiations with its TPP partners about what needs to be completed, both the market access component and the rules making component. The fact that the president has now requested TPA from Congress is a political statement that the goal is to get it completed in 2015.”
The major trade pact with Pacific Rim trading partners would link 12 countries and cover nearly 40 percent of the world economy.
Disagreement between the United States and Japan, the pact’s two biggest economies, over how widely Japan will open its doors to farm exports, has hindered progress on the agreement.
Medeiros said the pact is the No. 1 priority in the U.S. relationship with Japan.
“We have got to get TPP done, the last big market access negotiation with Japan,” he said.
“It’s hard because anything important between two large economies is hard to do, but we are in the end game and now is the time to get it done.”
Medeiros reiterated that Asia’s rising economic powerhouse, China, was welcome to join the TPP in the future, along with other countries, “if they are willing to meet the high standards.”
“I think the Chinese view of TPP has shifted over time,” he said.
“Originally in 2011, it was seen as anti-China. I think many Chinese have come round to recognizing that TPP could be a very useful external force in encouraging additional structural changes in the Chinese economy, similar to the role the WTO (World Trade Organization) played.”
China has said it is open to joining TPP, but it has also rejected a separate Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific framework.
