White House must be careful with wrapping up free trade pact - US firms

By Rizza Sta. Ana

Oct 07, 2013 07:20 AM EDT

US firms had warned President Barack Obama's administration to be cautious about its approach on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The landmark 12-nation Asia-Pacific free trade pact would allow member nations to benefit from free trade via an economic zone that stretches from Vietnam to Chile. US earlier said an additional USD billion worth of export trade would create 5,000 more jobs in the US.

After intensive talks conducted by the Obama administration, the government is leaning to finalize the deal by the year end. However, multinational firms in the US had expressed their worry about the consequences of imposing a tight deadline to the free trade pact completion. Government officials of the US had also indicated that the pact would result for them to be not able to remove all tariffs in member countries. It may also exclude some member-countries in order to ensure that the pact would be finalized on time.

Walmart Asia chief executive Scott Price told Reuters, "For Wal-Mart, we would like to see a high-quality agreement, which is that no sectors and no products are excluded. That there are no compromises that leak into the process for the purpose of speed."

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