WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — New US free trade agreements with Asia and Europe would enable the United States to shape new international trade guidelines, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday.
“The United States should be deeply engaged in helping to write the rules for trade,” Kerry said in an Atlantic Council speech on free trade. “If we do not protect our interests, no one else is going to.”
The Obama administration took one step closer to obtaining authority to broker major free-trade agreements in Asia and Europe on Wednesday, when the US Senate Finance Committee voted on a trade promotion authority that would authorize Obama to enter into free trade agreement like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Agreements such as TTIP and TPP are “really important” in giving the United States market access to nations that account for two-thirds of the world gross domestic product, Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Caroline Atkinson said Thursday.
Atkinson also told the Atlantic Council that the United States will be “setting standards by which trade will be conducted, first in Asia…and then with Europe.”
President Obama has been negotiating free trade with Asian and then European partners since taking office in 2009. However, he has not had the authority to conclude the negotiations and establish new free-trade deals, but began requesting that authority from the US Congress in 2012.
The US Senate will vote in the coming weeks on whether or not to grant Obama a trade promotion authority.
