TPP Not A Good Deal

TPP Not A Good Deal

TPP Not A Good Deal. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the single-most important trade negotiation ever in the history of U.S. agriculture and the entire U.S. economy - according to National Pork Producers Council Vice President and International Trade Counsel Nick Giordano. The TPP includes 12 countries - and Giordano says it's important for the U.S. to negotiate the best possible agreement. Unfortunately - Giordano says the current Japanese position on market access for agriculture doesn't allow that. Japan wants to exempt 586 tariff lines from tariff elimination - which Giordano says is at the heart of a Free Trade Agreement.

GIORDANO: When you really strip it down to its bare essentials what is it? It's eliminating tariffs. Now these agreements cover a lot of other things. They cover investment and intellectual property rights and data protection and SPS rules and so on. But, fundamentally, a free trade agreement is about eliminating tariffs.

The U.S. has never agreed to anything like this - according to Giordano. He puts the request in context.

GIORDANO: Since 2000, the U.S. has implemented 17 FTA's and you add up all the tariff lines, selling all the products that were exempted from tariff elimination that didn't go to zero, the Japanese request is almost 3 times greater than all of those exemptions in all 17 FTA's combined!

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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