Washington, D.C. – U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman met with Turkish Minister of Economy Zafer Caglayan today to launch work under the new U.S.-Turkey High Level Committee (HLC), for which the two officials will serve as co-chairs.
The HLC was announced by President Obama in May during the visit of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan as a means to explore how Turkey might be affected by the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) negotiations and to assess ways to liberalize U.S.-Turkey trade and investment. During their meeting, Ambassador Froman and Minister Caglayan discussed the organization of the HLC going forward and the possible issues both countries could examine in the near term, with a view toward enhancing our trade and investment relationship. They instructed their technical teams, to be headed by Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East L. Daniel Mullaney and Deputy Under Secretary of the Ministry of Economy Cemalettin Damlaci, to continue work on identifying HLC priority areas for cooperation and requested that the teams report their findings back to the co-chairs as soon as possible.
