Australian Dairy Farmers president Noel Campbell said there could be movement on the deal, which included 12 countries, in the next few months.
A sixth of global dairy trade is between TPP nations and Australia has Free Trade Agreements with many TPP nations.
“Our expectation is that if anything could happen with the TPP it will happen in the next couple of months, otherwise it will be too far into the US election cycle for anything to happen,” Mr Campbell said.
US Congress is also likely to either approve or disapprove the Trade Promotion Activity legislation, which outlines its negotiation objectives for talk about the TPP, in coming months. On Monday the US Dairy Export Council and National Milk Producers Federation urged congress to enact the TPA legislation “as quickly as possible” for TPP negotiations.
Mr Campbell said the current sticking point for TPP negotiations was industries such as pharmaceuticals, but ADF was conscious of ensuring dairy maintained or improved its market position in the negotiations.
“We have had some discussions with DFAT (the Foreign Affairs and Trade Department) in the last few months and put forward our position, especially on cheese in Japan,” he said.
“(There is) potential where we can benefit. There could be a TPP negative, particularly in relation to the Japan and US (relationship) and we are not privy to or the (Australian) Government is not privy to those discussions (between Japan and the US).”
Other potential downsides could be New Zealand gaining market advantages through the TPP process that are equal to or greater than Australia’s market advantages with certain countries.
Mr Campbell said that the upside of the deal would be around the export of cheese to Japan.
Australia’s FTA negotiations with Japan were concluded April last year but the outcome wasn’t positive for dairy
The industry hopes the TPP could improve on the FTA position.
Japan is Australia’s second biggest export nation for dairy and in 2013 it imported 125,000 tonnes of dairy products from Australia.
Dairy Australia analyst Charlie McElhone said the TPP process opened avenues to other markets that could be developed in the future.
Source: Weekly Times
