Administration Official Calls TPP a Critical 'Instrument' to Pressure Governance Changes
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a critical “instrument of leverage” to pressure changes to labor and other good governance laws in TPP countries such as Vietnam, said State Department official Tomasz Malinowski in testimony before a Senate foreign relations subcommittee on…
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June 16. The Obama administration is committed to concluding TPP as quickly as possible, said Malinowski alongside another State official and an administrator with the U.S. Agency for International Development. All three officials stressed the importance of TPP goals on trade facilitation and customs harmonization, as well. But TPP countries right now have a “sense of doubt” about whether the U.S. will deliver on TPP, said Malinowski. “If there’s no [Trade Promotion Authority], then these countries have far less reason to make, many times, the very painful and difficult choices we are asking them to make as a condition of eventually being in TPP,” he said. “They’re only going to take those painful steps, politically painful in many cases, if they know there is a realistic prospect at the end of the day that this is going to work out.”