Washington, DC – As the Comprehensive and Progressive Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP) agreement is scheduled to be signed in Santiago, Chile, NFTC’s Global Innovation Forum today released an updated report on The New Faces of Transpacific Trade highlighting globally-engaged small businesses and startups who are poised to benefit from the agreement.
The report profiles more than 20 globally-engaged startups and small businesses across the eleven countries of the CPTPP – Australia, the Nation of Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam . It outlines the challenges these entrepreneurs face, highlights the technologies they use to operate their global businesses, and explores how trade programs and policies, including the CPTPP, can enable their success in the global marketplace.
The report also helps to highlight what American entrepreneurs, businesses and workers stand to lose as the United States is not a party to the Agreement.
Dr. Wei-Shin Lai, co-founder of Erie, Pennsylvania-based SleepPhones, emphasized that, “as a small business with an innovative product, we need decreased barriers to more efficiently sell. The TPP would have helped with that.”
“On a day when key U.S. allies are uniting around a new framework to open markets for businesses and entrepreneurs, the United States is instead poised to announce new tariffs on steel and aluminum,” observed Jake Colvin, Executive Director of the Global Innovation Forum and Vice President for Trade and Innovation at the National Foreign Trade Council.
“The CPTPP will improve the ability of startups and small businesses across the Asia-Pacific by lowering tariffs, improving transparency, reducing shipping and customs frictions and improving access to the global digital economy, among other provisions,” Colvin added.
The report is available online at http://globalinnovationforum.com/new-faces-of-transpacific-trade-2018/
About the Global Innovation Forum
NFTC’s Global Innovation Forum connects startup and small business communities with corporations and government officials to explore the opportunities and challenges of engaging in the global marketplace. Through public forums, private workshops and online platforms, GIF elevates the global opportunity that exists, explores challenges to participating effectively in international markets and works to improve the public policy landscape to benefit a broad range of global innovators. GIF is a project of the National Foreign Trade Council Foundation. For more information, visit globalinnovationforum.com.