26 May Trade Updates: Obama Pushes TPP In Asia; Wolverine, FDRA Hosts USTR
TPP Gets Big Focus in Vietnam
The Trans-Pacific Partnership took center stage this week during President Obama’s trip to Asia. His visit to Vietnam wrapped up Tuesday, and now he’s headed to Japan, but the central theme of the importance of TPP has been one repeated often. The TPP, according to the administration, will be a crucial tool to counteract the regional power China. Obama also made the case that the deal will help support growth for the Vietnamese economy.
“Vietnam will be less dependent on any one trading partner and enjoy broader ties with more partners, including the United States,” Obama said during an address on Tuesday. “And TPP will reinforce regional cooperation. It will help address economic inequality and will advance human rights, with higher wages and safer working conditions. For the first time here in Vietnam, the right to form independent labor unions and prohibitions against forced labor and child labor. And it has the strongest environmental protections and the strongest anti-corruption standards of any trade agreement in history. That’s the future TPP offers for all of us, because all of us — the United States, Vietnam and the other signatories — will have to abide by these rules that we have shaped together. That’s the future that is available to all of us. So we now have to get it done — for the sake of our economic prosperity and our national security.”