Jacob Kopnick

A majority of stakeholders urged caution in possibly extending Generalized System of Preferences benefits to Myanmar (Burma) in comments filed us the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). They said the country’s progress towards good governance, while admirable, is tenuous and remains fraught with concerns over worker’s rights and military power. The USTR posted comments on its review to extend GSP to Myanmar (Burma) and Laos May 22. USTR is holding a public hearing in connection with its review June 4 (see 13041521).

Trade Promotion Authority is essential to securing passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and despite House Ways and Means staff efforts to craft a TPA bill, the Fast Track negotiating authority won’t be realized without Presidential leadership, a group of former U.S. Trade Representatives said May 20. While TPP negotiations are complex -- tackling special interests like dairy and sugar, as well as the potential inclusion of Japan -- the talks can be completed by the October deadline, the former officials said at a panel during the U.S. New Zealand Pacific Partnership Forum. Without Fast Track negotiating authority, however, that’s unlikely to happen, they said.

Promoting the free flow of data and better understanding of U.S. privacy standards should be priorities for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in trade negotiations with the EU, trade associations said in response to a call from the USTR for comments on an upcoming trade negotiation between the U.S. and the EU. Public Knowledge advocated that the negotiations -- named the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) -- remain open and not interfere with U.S. copyright law reform.

President Obama nominated his law school classmate and current Deputy National Security Advisor Mike Froman to be the next U.S. Trade Representative, and longtime fundraiser Penny Pritzker, billionaire and Hyatt Hotels family descendant, to be Commerce Secretary May 2.

Although the Supreme Court's ruling in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley centered on imported books, the ruling will have an impact across a wide variety of products, said industry experts. The long struggle over application of the copyright first sale doctrine includes court cases on products as diverse as watches and shampoo. Kirtsaeng doesn't end that struggle either; it will now shift away from the courts to different forums, they said. But regardless of the ebbs and flows of the battles over parallel market imports, the focus for importers will remain due diligence to prevent intellectual property violations.

Governments need to move away from blunt mechanisms like the “Great Firewall of China” as they consider how to regulate the international flow of data and other aspects of e-commerce, said Jonathan McHale, deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)-Telecom and Electronic Commerce Policy, during a Brookings Institution event Feb. 26. The Internet’s reputation for being “notoriously resistant” to borders has made it difficult for governments to impose anything other than such blunt mechanisms, but they are “a very inefficient way of being able to participate in what’s obviously an enormously innovative and economically important sector,” he said. “We have to rethink what are reasonable rules that will allow governments to have an impact on what happens to data, despite the fact that they don’t have jurisdiction over necessarily where the data is located or where the servers are.” The worst thing that could happen is a repeat of the “Balkanized” telecommunications network that resulted from governments nationalizing their portions of the global telegraph network for strategic reasons, McHale said.

The 15th round of Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations are more secretive than previous rounds, said a joint statement from a group of stakeholders attending the negotiations. Unlike previous rounds of negotiations, the most recent of which took place in Leesburg, Va., stakeholders are allowed on the premises during negotiations only on one of the ten days, said the group, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Knowledge Ecology International and Consumers International. The negotiations are at the SkyCity Convention Centre in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Obama administration changed its mind about its concerns with several proposed miscellaneous tariff bills that would suspend duties on footwear, said a spokeswoman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR now says it only has issues with new duty suspensions and not the 15 bills that would extend previous suspensions. A large number of duty suspensions are scheduled to expire at the end of the year.

CBP would face nearly $1 billion in budget cuts if budget sequestration occurs Jan. 2, as currently scheduled, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement $478 million. Virtually all government agencies involved, even just peripherally, with trade would face budget cuts of about 8.2 percent, if sequestration occurs, according to government figures. Officials of individual government agencies generally have been unwilling to discuss specifics of how they would be affected by the budget cuts.

The recently leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership provisions do "disappointingly little to protect users' rights," wrote Public Knowledge Director-Global Knowledge Rashmi Rangnath in a blog post. Rangnath criticized the leaked provisions, which provide a glimpse into the ways the U.S. Trade Representative has attempted to negotiate the free trade agreement with eight other countries. Specifically, Rangnath took issue with the provisions' "three-step test," which would determine which unlicensed uses of copyrighted material would be legal. According to the post, "one of the standard iterations of the test" designates exceptions to copyrights as "[1] certain special cases that [2] do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work, performance, or phonogram and [3] do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder." This test on its own leaves too much room for interpretation, Rangnath said: "The controversy over how to interpret the three-step test means that many countries may hesitate to protect users' rights in their copyright laws, out of a fear that the provisions they adopt will be assailed as violating their international obligations. ... Given this environment, provisions in international agreements like the TPP need to spell out in more detail what copyright limitations and exceptions should look like." While Rangnath commended the provisions for "enumerating purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, research, and scholarship," she encouraged USTR to include provisions that would "promote uses of works by people with disabilities," such as translating reading material into Braille, and "promote educational uses of works including by transmission over wired or wireless networks." Concepts like these, Rangnath said, can be found in the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement of 2005, which, she said, "is technically the predecessor to the TPP. ... However, it is unclear whether those provisions will still be valid and applicable if the TPP comes to force." A USTR spokeswoman declined to comment on the leaked provisions. Regarding the release of the official draft, the spokeswoman told us the "full draft of the negotiated TPP text will be made public at the completion of negotiations, so that Congress and the public can have ample time to review and discuss before Congress acts on any legislation to implement the TPP agreement."