The last round of negotiations in the quest for  a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement closed this past Tuesday, February 25, with no date for the next session.   To be sure, there were positive things about this latest meeting.  U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said he was "pleased and impressed with the progress made."   Nevertheless, in many quarters it  served to reinforce the notion that TPP still has a long way to go. 

Each of the 12 countries participating in the TPP talks is home to a range of perspectives and concerns.   And each set of concerns is different in some ways.  Vietnam, for example, is presumably more concerned about market access issues in the U.S. than in Japan.  But there are similarities throughout the polities of the 12, and we expect one can find exponents of a fairly jaundiced view of the talks in each.  In New Zealand, one such is Professor Jane Kelsey of the University of Auckland.  In an article published earlier today she wrote, "After four years of talks, the TPP is hostage to deadlock between its two super-powers, the United States and Japan, and drowning under its over-ambitious agenda." 

There is evidence for that point of view, though we are not sure that the deadlock is one that can or should be explained solely by differences between the United States and Japan.  We are convinced, however, that  "market access," specifically the political will to open further, is at the heart of the matter.

As for how that issue is evolving in the United States, we were very encouraged by the strong language from Vice President Joe Biden that the Financial Times published today.  It was in an excellent op-ed article, one with several strong themes.  We expect to return to it next week for another look at some of them.  We'll end here with just one quote from that article, one that underscores the importance of TPP for more than just the contribution it could make to U.S. GDP.  The Vice President wrote: