Reported by Industry Week ~ The U.S. wants to ensure that it is a key player in trade in China and other Asia Pacific locales , in part to counter the rising economic and military power of China. To do that, it has been engaged with 11 other countries in negotiating a wide-ranging trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement designed to help open and strengthen these markets for U.S. businesses. The Obama administration has been negotiating TPP since 2010 and some hope those talks will be finished by the end of this year.
American manufacturers have been looking east for at least two generations. First came the rush to cut costs by manufacturing in Asian countries. That mass exodus of work has helped fuel the remarkable rise of the middle class in Asian nations that now makes them so desirable as expanding markets for U.S. goods and services.