Trade ministers for 12 Pacific Rim nations, including the United States and Japan, on Friday neared agreement on an array of differences covering automotive, pharmaceutical and dairy exports, and decided to extend the negotiations into Saturday in hope of concluding the biggest regional pact in history.
The willingness to continue talks, which began in a hotel here on Wednesday, fuelled optimism among the participating nations - and apprehension among critics hovering in its halls and monitoring the negotiations from afar - that the elusive Trans-Pacific Partnership was within reach after years of discussion.
Negotiators for the United States and Japan neared a compromise over the length of a phase-out of tariffs on cars and trucks made in Japan and sold in this country.
Yet sticking points persisted, including over compromise language from the American side on protections for drug makers, an issue that stymied previous talks in July in Hawaii.
It remained unclear whether President Obama would be able to claim an achievement central to his efforts to reorient the United States toward its fast-growing Pacific neighbours (rather than Europe and the Middle East), or whether the negotiators would once again pocket the progress made here and eventually stagger through another round of talks as Obama's presidency wound down.
If a deal is reached, Congress would not render its verdict for months, well into a presidential election year in which anti-trade rhetoric is loud among Republicans and Democrats.
From Washington, Obama continued to lend his influence to his trade representative here, Michael B. Froman. On Thursday, the president called Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, who took power less than three weeks ago in a party shake-up, to confirm their mutual interest in signing an agreement.
But differences between their two nations - over protections for American drug makers and Australia's desire to sell more sugar to the United States - are among the remaining obstacles. These differences led some observers to suspect an emerging trade-off on drugs and sugar. On Friday, seven Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee sent Froman a letter warning against concessions that could harm domestic sugar and dairy industries.
The talks also involve Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand, Chile and Peru. Together, the 12 nations account for about two-fifths of global economic output.
By Friday, it seemed clear than any agreement would include provisions for autos that would phase out tariffs between the participating countries, require autos to have a certain share of parts made in treaty nations, lift nontariff barriers that effectively keep American autos out of Japan and create a process for settling disputes between governments over suspected violations of the agreement.
The large auto section in the Trans-Pacific Partnership presented substantive complications for the Obama administration, as well as domestic carmakers and unions, when Japan entered the trade talks in 2013, several years into the negotiations. Industry and union officials have been on site here, along with one member of Congress - Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, the lead Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade.
©2015 The New York Times News Service
