Countries in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal have agreed on the core elements to move ahead without the United States, officials said on Saturday, Reuters reports.
Taking the agreement forward is a boost for the principle of multilateral trade pacts after President Donald Trump ditched the TPP early this year, in favor of an “America First” policy he believes would save U.S. jobs.
Discussions have been held on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang, where Trump and other leaders held their main meeting on Saturday. “We have overcome the hardest part,” said Vietnam’s trade minister, Tran Tuan Anh.
The agreement, which still needs to be finalised, would now be called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), he added.
Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi stressed that he hopes that moving ahead with the deal would be a step towards bringing back the United States. Partly to counter China’s growing dominance in Asia, Japan had been lobbying hard for the TPP pact, which aims to eliminate tariffs on industrial and farm products across the 11-nation bloc whose trade totaled $356 billion last year, Reuters adds.
Some 20 provisions of the original agreement were suspended. Those included some related to protecting labor rights and the environment, although most were related to intellectual property – one of the main sticking points after the U.S. withdrawal.
Reuters notes that any kind of deal looked doubtful on Friday, when a summit of TPP leaders was called off after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau did not attend. Canada’s trade minister later blamed Trudeau’s absence on “a misunderstanding about the schedule”.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Trudeau said though his country was pleased with the progress made on TPP, there was “still more important work to be done.” Trudeau said Canada will always be “extremely closely linked to the American economy” but there was a need to diversify trade through other deals.
In a speech in Danang, Trump sent out a strong message that he was only interested in bilateral deals in Asia that would not disadvantage the United States, Reuters informs.
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