USTR Holds Off On Sending TPP Notifications To Hill For Mexico, ...

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Inside U.S. Trade - 07/06/2012

USTR Holds Off On Sending TPP Notifications To Hill For Mexico, Canada
Posted: Jul. 05, 2012

SAN DIEGO -- In meetings last week with U.S. business representatives, Mexican Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari made clear that the Mexican government is eager for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to formally notify Congress that Mexico will join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations as soon as possible, sources said. While TPP partners invited Mexico to join the TPP talks on June 18, USTR has still not sent up its formal notification to Congress. Once it does, that will kick off a 90-day period for consultations between the administration and Congress on negotiating objectives, and Mexico cannot participate at all in the TPP talks until after that time expires. For that reason, the Mexican minister made clear last week that he was worried that USTR was not moving faster on this issue. Ferrari met with USTR Ron Kirk on June 28 and was expected to convey a similar message in person, one source said. The Mexican minister also gave a closed-door speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 29, and met with business representatives in other formats last week as well. A U.S. trade official this week said the administration planned to send that notification "soon," but declined to offer a detailed explanation of why it had not yet done so. "We have several items that we're concluding, and then we will send the notification," the official said. The official left ambiguous whether the outstanding items involved only internal work within the Obama administration, or additional bilateral work with Canada and Mexico. The first TPP round in which Canada and Mexico would be able to participate is the 15th round planned for December, assuming that the 90-day consultation period has elapsed by that time. The official said the location of that round has not been decided, but sources here said New Zealand was being considered as a possibility. The official acknowledged that the entry of two new TPP partners is likely to prolong the negotiations, if only because these countries will have a delayed start in negotiating on market access with current participants. "If we have new members join, they'll have to provide market access offers that are almost by necessity going to take additional time, but we're trying to make sure we can still keep the timeline to what we hoped it would be," the official said. The official declined to respond directly when asked whether the TPP countries would still be able to meet President Obama's goal of completing a deal this year now that Canada and Mexico are both poised to join, but appeared downbeat. "We're moving as quickly as we can. We've added two countries now, they'll be coming in late this year," the official said. "So you can assess for yourself what you think that does to the timeline." Overall, the official made clear that Mexico and Canada will not get to participate in the 14th round of talks, slated for sometime in September, meaning that they will not formally participate in a round until December. This official said it was an "uncomfortable" situation to have two new countries joining the talks after 14 rounds of negotiations, and that TPP leaders as a result had made clear they did not want new entrants to lower the level of ambition being sought in the agreement or slow down the process. "[T]he question of how you integrate other countries in, when you're in the middle of a negotiation that's actually moving rapidly toward closure was a real one, and one that people spent a lot of time considering," the official said. In the end, current TPP countries agreed to let Mexico and Canada join after those two countries pledged that, once they enter the negotiations, they will not reopen any issues on which the original nine have reached consensus by that point (Inside U.S. Trade, June 22). "We have made the decision to allow both countries to join, but to do so in a way that doesn't force us to renegotiate what we've just spent 14 rounds doing," the official said. Along with Mexico, TPP partners invited Canada to join the ongoing talks last month, and USTR also has not yet sent up its notification for Canada either. Sources said the notification for either country was unlikely to go up this week partly because Congress was out on recess.

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