The U.S. and European trade delegations hammered out more details of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks during the negotiating round last week outside Washington, D.C., with progress made on technical and food safety regulations as well as the services sector, said the U.S. and European Union chief negotiators after the talks wrapped up on Oct. 3. Chief U.S. negotiator Dan Mullaney emphasized that the two sides will not harmonize their chemical regulations regimes, but will work hard to set up a system across the Atlantic that avoids regulatory duplication. Mullaney hit back at concerns over an investor-state dispute provision in a final agreement, saying the agreement will not jeopardize government efforts to protect the environment, consumers, health and safety. The “regulatory pillar of TTIP” is poised to give the most benefit to the U.S. and EU of all the topics negotiated, said EU chief negotiator Ignacio Garcia-Bercero, while adding that the two sides discussed trade facilitation during the round. Garcia-Bercero said the new European Commission will be strongly supportive of the TTIP negotiations, after it takes over Nov. 1. New European Union trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom called for a restart in negotiations during her confirmation hearing on Sept. 29 (see 14093025).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is asking for comments on Kuwaiti intellectual property rights protections, as part of its out-of-cycle review on the country. USTR said it would conduct the review when it published its Special 301 report for 2014 in late April (see 14050101). The agency designated Kuwait a “Watch List” country, which is two steps below the most severe USTR classification of an IPR violator. The review will focus mostly on copyright legislation and IPR enforcement. The Special 301 report advised Kuwait to amend its copyright legislation to meet international standards and continue its enforcement regime on copyright piracy and trademark infringement. Comments are due by Oct. 15, and should be submitted via www.regulations.gov, docket number USTR-2014-0019.

U.S. trade chief Michael Froman signaled a willingness to continue to work with Japanese negotiators to liberalize Japan’s markets through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying on Oct. 2 that the U.S. has also battled over the years to reform its own economic structure. Despite a reportedly fruitless meeting with Japanese cabinet official Akira Amari in recent days, U.S. Trade Representative Froman said the U.S. is “very fortunate” to have Amari as his counterpart. Both the U.S. and Japan said no progress was made during the Sept. 23-24 talks between Froman and Amari (see 14092514).

The U.S. and Brazil reached a compromise on a long-running trade dispute involving U.S. cotton subsidies and agricultural export credit guarantees, said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Oct. 1. Brazil agreed to not challenge those U.S. policies at the World Trade Organization. The Brazilian government threatened in February to hit back against the U.S. subsidies, saying they had already developed a retaliation list, but that threat petered out over the following months (see 14011425). After the dispute process launched in 2002, the WTO granted Brazil retaliation rights in 2009 (here). “American businesses, including agricultural businesses and producers, could have faced countermeasures in the way of increased tariffs totaling hundreds of millions of dollars every year,” said Vilsack a statement. “This removes that threat and ensures American cotton farmers will have effective risk management tools.” The statement did not give details on what the U.S. conceded in the agreement.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is asking for public comment on country eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act as part of an annual review of the preference program. The Department of Labor may also consider comments that relate to child labor in beneficiary countries. Comments must be submitted to USTR by Oct. 25 through http://www.regulations.gov, docket number USTR-2014-0018. The AGOA law requires countries to strive to meet the following criteria:

The U.S. will host the 7th round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks in Chevy Chase, Maryland from Sept. 29-Oct. 3. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman will also meet on Sept. 29 with Australian Minister of Trade Andrew Robb and Peruvian Minister for Foreign Trade and Tourism Magali Silva, said USTR's weekly schedule. On Sept. 30, Froman will participate in the 2014 Global Services Summit, and then meet with Mohammad Ziauddin, ambassador of Bangladesh to the U.S. U.S. and European officials will also allow press access to TTIP industry presentations on Oct. 1. Chief negotiators will give a press conference on Oct. 3.

Obama Administration officials outlined the threat to international trade stemming from data localization laws in foreign countries, at a Brookings Institution event Thursday (here). Some countries have sought to restrict the flow of data across borders in reaction to NSA surveillance activities revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Richard Salgado, Google law enforcement and information security legal director. Those policies can harm the U.S. economy and hamper the open Internet standards the administration seeks to secure, said administration officials.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is asking the public to comment on internet forums and physical markets outside the U.S. that should be included in USTR’s Notorious Markets List. The list includes marketplaces that are involved in copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting. Those who are interested are able to send in comments through Oct. 24, via www.regulations.gov, docket number USTR--2014--0017. The 2013 list called out physical marketplaces in Argentina, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, Thailand and Ukraine (see 14021211).

Growth in U.S. trade with Mongolia will depend on how that country cultivates its mining sector, said U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization, Michael Punke, at the outset of the WTO trade policy review of the central Asian country. “Since 2010, Mongolia has experienced double-digit GDP growth, led by higher commodity prices for copper, gold, zinc, coal and other minerals and by large capital inflows supporting Mongolia’s pursuit of world-class mining development projects,” he said on Sept. 24. But bilateral trade with the U.S. topped off at only slightly more than $700 million in 2012, said Punke. On top of corruption, weak rule of law and other obstacles to economic growth, planned revamping of Mongolia’s 2006 Minerals Law is posing particular challenges to that sector, Punke added. “Officials at all levels of government now delay or even refuse to process normal requests for extending or issuing exploration and mining licenses, ostensibly out of concern that actions taken under the current law might eventually become invalid or require alteration under the new law being considered,” said Punke. “The effect has been to generate long and costly bureaucratic delays in several commercial sectors, which has increased investment risk.”

U.S. and Japanese negotiators failed to make any progress in Trans-Pacific Partnership market access and non-tariff barrier talks during two days of meetings, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a Sept. 24 statement. USTR Michael Froman and Japanese Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Akira Amari, along with their teams, met from Sept. 23-24, but the two sides “were unable to make further progress on the key outstanding issues,” said USTR, saying the focus was on agriculture and autos. In the days before those Sept. 23-24 talks, however, “constructive” mid-level negotiations did take place, the statement added. “Both sides will consider next steps following consultations in both capitals,” it said. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sept. 23 said Japan made a proposal to the U.S. that included more agricultural market liberalization (see 14092418). The U.S. and Japan have battled for months over Japanese tariffs on rice, beef and pork, wheat, dairy and sugar imports in TPP (see 14091028). "I had hoped [Japan's new proposal] would lead [negotiations] to the next stage, but there was a gap in our discussions," Amari told Japanese reporters after the talks (here).