Excerpt: U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk hailed Japan’s “important” announcement Friday to move toward joining negotiations on a free-trade zone in the Asian-Pacific region, but stressed that Tokyo must be prepared to dismantle trade barriers…. Chuck Dittrich, vice president for regional trade issues at the National Foreign Trade Council, said Japan could help make the Trans-Pacific trade deal the “gold standard” of trade agreements. But first, Japan must “truly dismantle deeply rooted tariff and nontariff barriers to trade and open market access in key sectors, including autos, insurance, pharmaceuticals and agriculture–where decades of negotiations have often failed to translate into meaningful and systemic reform,” he said.
