Ensure TPP Does Not Replicate KORUS Deficit, Says Rep. Slaughter
The widening U.S. trade deficit with South Korea demonstrates the need for the Obama Administration to ensure U.S. manufacturing receives significant foreign market access in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., wrote in an Oct. 24 letter to President Barack Obama. The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement entered into force in March 2012. The deficit now totals nearly $15 billion, according to Census data released on Oct. 24 (here), up $1.5 billion since 2011. “As the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations appear to be drawing to a close, I am increasingly concerned that our trade negotiators are making the same mistakes that were made in KORUS and previous trade agreements,” said Slaughter. The letter is being kept private due to on-going correspondence with the administration, said a press official for Slaughter. U.S. trade officials continue to eye the end of 2013 for conclusion of TPP negotiations, a 12-nation prospective pact (see 13100805).
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Slaughter intends to reintroduce the Reciprocal Markets Access Act, a press release said. The bill “would instruct U.S. trade negotiators to eliminate foreign market barriers before reducing U.S. tariffs and provide enforcement authority to reinstate the tariff if the foreign government does not honor its commitment to remove its barriers,” said the release. “This legislation would also instruct the International Trade Commission to conduct an assessment of the impact of a prospective trade agreement on market opportunities and barriers for U.S. products or services that will be impacted by the trade agreement.”