Adjourned without Outcome

The parties of Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiation gave up an achievement by the end of this year. As a fruit of miniters meeting in Singapore, they released a statement to continue their works for coming weeks, although they identified “landing zones.” News reports in Japan indicated that hard pushes of the United States broke up the talks, and Japan miscalculated U.S. ambitiousness. In terms of having reflected voices from emerging countries, the talk can be said to be democratic, anyway.

Reaching a deal within this year has been a substantial goal for U.S. President, Barack Obama, who expects to appeal it as a big achievement for med-term election next fall. He has been explaining TPP as a functional tool for doubling U.S. exports.

However, skepticisms on Obama administration made U.S. delegates rigid on keeping its national interest. U.S. insisted on high-level liberalization of trade in all areas of the talk. In bilateral negotiation with Japan, U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, required complete abolition of tariffs on five agricultural products, dismissing Japan’s proposal to raise the ratio of overall liberalization from 93% to 95% with partial abolition in “crucial fives.”

Japan was not ready for that rigidity of U.S. Japan kept a scenario of drawing out a flexible attitude in the crucial fives from U.S., as a return of compromise in car trade. Delegates of Japan expected U.S. to make the deal with necessity of reaching a goal by the end of this year. Missing a momentum for a deal, Japan needs to reshape its strategy for maybe prolonged negotiation for next year.

Behind miscalculation of U.S. and Japan, there was negotiating power of growing nations. Against U.S. that wanted to protect movie industries with long intellectual property rights, emerging countries strongly opposed it in their need of playing old movies less expensively. On abolishing protections for government-controlled firms, Malaysia rejected to make it included in agenda. Some reports resembled that structure of stalemate to the negotiation of World Trade Organization.

There is no guarantee for an achievement next year. Officials see that Obama’s visit to Asian nations next spring will play a key role. However, it is only U.S. that has political deadline. No party except U.S. has a reason to hurry the talk up. TPP is a too broad framework to achieve a concrete goal within a short period of time. It is not unrealistic that this Pacific rim free trade negotiation will be broken down with a sharp contradiction between free trade ambition and national interest.