Japan has expressed concern about a loss of momentum in talks on a pan-Pacific trade pact after participants failed to agree to meet again this month to try to clinch a deal that would cover 40 percent of the global economy.
Ministers from the 12 nations negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would stretch from Japan to Chile, fell short of a deal at talks last month on the Hawaiian island of Maui, despite early optimism.
Japanese Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Akira Amari, in a blogpost circulated yesterday, also questioned why the US appeared to have lacked its usual “stubborn persistence” at those talks, despite a willingness by some countries to stay to try to reach an agreement.
“The reason I stressed ... that we should meet again this month, was because each country might lose interest and [the talks] would go adrift,” Amari wrote.
“If they lose interest, it would take considerable time and effort to get motivation back to the original level, because the key to success is whether each country can maintain momentum towards an agreement,” Amari added.
Amari said that the US was vague about a concrete time frame and it appeared its negotiators needed a break.
Amari reiterated that a dispute over intellectual property protection for data used to develop biologic drugs, which Washington insists should be 12 years, and gaps over access to member countries’ dairy markets — a key issue for New Zealand — were major sticking points.
“What every country thought was strange was that the United States did not show its usual stubborn persistence this time, but simply gave up,” he wrote, adding that the US negotiators seemed to have judged that agreement could not be reached in a day or two.
Meanwhile, labor activists worry the TPP negotiation will prioritize corporate profits over workers’ rights and pressure governments to bow to the will of investors.
Campaigners for workers’ rights complain that they have been denied a voice in the trade talks, and have raised concerns about part of the deal that would allow corporations to sue governments for the potential loss of future profits.
“The investor-state dispute settlement provisions in this massive trade deal ... if it’s passed, binds them to a convoluted logic that allows multinational corporations to sue ... if a government passes a law or regulation that protects its people to the possible detriment of sales,” Solidarity Center executive director Shawna Bader-Blau said.
“Corporate rights are treated as portable, binding and protected by enforceable laws in global trade agreements, but not so human rights,” Bader-Blau said at the opening of a migrant labor conference on Monday hosted by Solidarity Center in Bogor, 60km south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
Speaking before more than 200 labor and migration experts from 45 countries, Bader-Blau said that while investor rights are protected, human rights are “relegated to unenforceable side agreements, aspirational multilateral protocols, spotty national laws and no accountability.”
“Sitting here in Asia, you cannot help but think of slavery on ships, mass graves, the US government’s disastrous upgrade of Malaysia in its trafficking in persons report — enormous desperation fueling enormous wealth,” she said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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