The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced this week that the United States will host a meeting of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade ministers in Atlanta next week on Wednesday and Thursday. The TPP chief negotiators will meet from Saturday to Tuesday, also in Atlanta.
The USTR announcement could possibly signal that the meetings may result in a final agreement. After the July meetings in Hawaii, USTR officials said that ministers should not meet again until they are ready to finalize the deal. “Trade ministers and negotiators last met in July and have been making good progress toward resolving the limited number of outstanding issues,” USTR said this week.
In addition, USTR released a detailed summary of U.S. goals and objectives for TPP and presents in detail U.S. negotiating objectives. The United States efforts in TPP are to “use international trade to unlock opportunity and support well-paying jobs, level the playing field for American workers, and make sure that we are the ones writing the rules of global trade–rules that reflect our interests and our values,” the summery said.
To read the detailed summary, click here.
