Updated: Officials from the United States, Mexico and Canada are holding talks this week in Washington on outstanding issues in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
[ August 20, 2015| Inside U.S. Trade ]
These sources said the talks would begin Thursday (Aug. 20), leaving open the possibility that they could last more than one day. Canadian chief TPP negotiator Kirsten Hillman will head up the Canadian delegation, sources said.
The key outstanding issue where all three countries are major players is the automotive rule of origin. Canada and Mexico during the TPP ministerial last month in Maui rejected a deal worked out beforehand by the U.S. and Japan on a regional content threshold they considered unacceptably low.
The U.S. and Canada are also still in negotiations on dairy market access. In Maui, Canada offered to create several new tariff-rate quotas on dairy products and poultry that would be open to all TPP countries, but the U.S. and other parties have rejected this proposal as insufficient.
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