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  • Trade Agreements
  • Free Trade Agreements
  • Trans-Pacific Partnership
  • TPP Issue-by-Issue Information Center
  • Services

    • Services

    Increasing opportunities for American service providers in the Asia-Pacific region.
     
    Services industries account for four out of five jobs in the United States, the world’s largest services exporter. In 2014, U.S. services exports of $710 million supported an estimated 4.6 million jobs and expanded the U.S. services trade surplus to $233 billion. American service workers are in industries that include the Internet, information, and software services; professional services; financial services; media and entertainment; express delivery and logistics; scientific research and development, telecommunications, and others.
     
    Securing liberalized and fair access to foreign services markets will help U.S. service suppliers, both small and large, to increase exports to TPP markets and support more jobs at home.
     
    OBJECTIVES
    • Expand market opportunities for U.S. services suppliers by reducing barriers to international trade in services.
       
    • Ensure that TPP countries do not discriminate against U.S. service suppliers.
       
    • Uphold the ability of governments to set quality and safety standards, to regulate in the public interest, and to provide public services.
       
    • Improve transparency and predictability related to services.
       
    • Establish provisions that would enable service suppliers to supply services without establishing an office in every TPP country.
       
    • Secure commitments that allow for transfer of funds related to the cross-border supply of services to be made freely and without delay, while ensuring that governments retain the flexibility to manage volatile capital flows.
       
    • Establish new or enhanced obligations in specific sectors important to promoting trade (e.g., enhanced disciplines for express delivery services Will promote regional supply chains and aid small businesses, which often are highly dependent on express delivery services for integration into supply chains and distribution networks).
       
    • Ensure that TPP service benefits are not open to ‘shell companies’ controlled by non-TPP countries.
       
    • Secure commitments to liberalize foreign financial services and insurance markets while protecting a government’s broad flexibility to regulate, including in the financial sector, and to take the actions necessary to ensure the stability and integrity of a financial system.
       
    • Include a set of specific financial services commitments that would:
      • Allow a portfolio manager located outside its territory (other than a trust company) to provide advice to an asset manager located in its territory.
      • Prevent preferential treatment to postal entities selling direct insurance, including by giving them preferential rights to distribution channels or subjecting them to less stringent enforcement.
      • Allow the cross-border supply of electronic payment services, creating new growth opportunities for U.S. suppliers of electronic credit and debit payment services, a major new growth area in financial services.
      • Permit cross-border transfer of information for data processing where such processing is required in a financial institution’s ordinary course of business.
         
    RESOURCES
    For more information on trade in services, visit WWW.USTR.GOV/ISSUE-AREAS/SERVICES-INVESTMENT/