【Column】 TPP negotiations and Tokyo Disneyland(Nov. 2)

Chief negotiators of 11 signatory countries to the Trans-Pacific Partnership held talks in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, in late October and early November to work out details of a new deal following withdrawal of the Unite States from the free trade pact in January.

The negotiations were held at a hotel located within a stone’s throw of Tokyo Disneyland, and because it was the Halloween season, the negotiators wearing business suits ended up walking through the hotel floor filled with people dressed as Disney characters.

Japanese government officials said they looked for a hotel in the whole of the main island of Japan and it was the only hotel they could book conference rooms and rooms for negotiators to stay. But one government source said it was such an ironic situation, considering that Disneyland is the symbol of U.S. culture.

The TPP deal includes intellectual property provisions requiring that copyright protections extend at least 70 years past the author’s death, mirroring the U.S. copyright term extension act, also known as the Micky Mouse Protection Act. The U.S. had been strongly pushing for such copyright term extensions backed by the nation’s film and animation industry.

In the latest talks, the TPP-11 negotiators discussed freezing some rules that U.S. had asked for, in a bid to make the U.S. want to come back to the framework.

Thus, the negotiations held right next to Disneyland prompted some to think that the place was a good choice to send the message to the U.S.

However, the U.S. does not seem to have changed its stance of demanding for bilateral negotiations, and there are concerns that President Donald Trump might propose launch of talks for a bilateral free trade agreement when he visits Tokyo later in November. “Japan should say no to bilateral FTA. That’s the message we want the government to send,” an agricultural industry official said.

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