BORACAY, Philippines—The U.S. Senate's passage of
fast-track legislation has injected fresh momentum into talks on a
landmark Pacific trade deal, with negotiators saying they are in
the final stages of discussions after more than five years of
wrangling.
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said he feels good
about progress on the deal, which would lower tariffs and set
environmental and intellectual property rules, among other things,
for 12 nations including the U.S. and Japan that together account
for about 40% of the global economy.
"We're very much in the endgame," Mr. Froman told reporters
during a meeting of trade ministers of the 21-member Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. He
declined to specify a timetable for concluding the talks.
On Friday, the U.S. Senate passed so-called fast-track
legislation, which would help conclude the Trans-Pacific
Partnership deal with Japan and 10 other countries. The fast track,
or trade-promotion authority, means that this pact and others would
be held to an up-or-down vote in Congress without amendments.
Mr. Froman, who arrived in Boracay on Saturday after seeing
through the fast-track measure in the Senate, said he looked
forward to working with House legislators to get the pact passed
"as soon as possible."
The fast-track bill faces a test in the House in June. Still,
TPP trade ministers said over the weekend that clearing a first
hurdle in the Senate is a positive sign.
The Senate's vote was a "welcome development" and could set the
stage for completion of the trade pact "in the coming months," said
New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser.
Other ministers signaled they were also ready to push forward
with talks: "Mexico is ready to wrap up negotiations," Economy
Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said.
Many of the TPP founding nations—the U.S., Japan,
Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand,
Peru, Singapore and Vietnam—have been reluctant to hold
concluding talks on the trade pact without guarantees that U.S.
lawmakers wouldn't subject it to changes.
Trade ministers in recent days canceled a meeting in Guam after
most of the countries involved in creating the TPP objected to
discussions without assurance of the fast-track legislation in the
U.S., Chile's Deputy Trade Minister Andres Rebolledo said.
At a breakfast Sunday morning, trade ministers in Boracay
discussed the status of the Guam negotiations, but didn't set a
timetable for a next round of minister-level meetings, officials
with knowledge of the meeting said. Several officials said a host
of issues being discussed in Guam remain to be resolved.
The trade pact is controversial in the U.S. and in many founding
countries for being too far-reaching in measures including
stringent intellectual property rights, among other things.
Mr. Rebolledo described the pact as a necessity for Chile, which
depends heavily on foreign trade and is the only TPP member that
has existing bilateral trade agreements with all other members.
"When you're a country like this, you need rules. You need that
everyone fulfills the rules, especially the big countries," he
said.
Write to Ben Otto at ben.otto@wsj.com
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