Trade policy will take center stage at the U.S. Grains Council’s 53rd Annual Board of Delegates Meeting, as senior governmental representatives from Canada and New Zealand will join U.S. speakers to discuss current developments in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) negotiations. The meeting will be held July 29-31, 2013, at the Westin Hotel, Ottawa, Ontario.

Simon Tucker, New Zealand’s Ambassador to Canada, will offer a key perspective from down-under. New Zealand, one of the leaders in the TTP negotiations, has already signed a free trade agreement with ASEAN and is engaged with ASEAN and other regional powers, including Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, in negotiations to establish a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. As a central player in these proliferating regional trade agreements, New Zealand is strongly committed to trade expansion in a dynamic, rapidly growing region where the United States is playing catch-up on trade agreements.

Canada is the United States’ largest trading partner, as well as a North American Free Trade Agreement partner and a major agricultural exporter that shares many of the United States’ concerns on market access issues. Two of Canada’s principal trade negotiators will join the Ottawa meeting to discuss Canada’s perspectives on T-TIPP and TPP. Denis Landreville and Frederic Seppey are, respectively, the director of the trade negotiations division and the cheif agricultural negotiator and director general, trade agreements and negotiations directorate, at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. As key members of Canada’s negotiating team, they will identify areas of common interest – and occasional tension – between the two nations as they work to expand market access for North American agricultural producers and agribusinesses.

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