“Obviously, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is just another US attempt to build an architecture of regional economic cooperation that the US would benefit from,” the Russian President said in an interview with Chinese media. “At the same time, I believe that the absence of two major regional players such as Russia and China in its composition will not promote the establishment of effective trade and economic cooperation.”
The TPP is a proposed regional free-trade agreement, which is being negotiated by 12 states in the Asia-Pacific region, which include the US, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
It was planned that the talks to launch the Partnership would be completed between 2005 and 2012, but complex issues like agriculture, intellectual property, investments and others saw the discussion continue until now.
Yet, President Putin stressed, it is not easy to evaluate the progress, which has been achieved in the talks on Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“This initiative is carried out behind closed doors, even businesses and the public of the contracting states have no access to it, let alone other countries. Over the past five years of negotiations, we have repeatedly heard about the success achieved, but such statements have always been refuted later,” he said.
