After a keynote address by Japanese Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae, a panel of trade experts will discuss Japan’s participation in the TPP, the politics of the agreement in Congress, and the likelihood that negotiations will end successfully. This event comes just one day before the next round of TPP negotiations begin in Lima, Peru.

As negotiators look for agreement in Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, success would be the most important symbol of America's economic "pivot" to Asia while its failure would have major implications on global growth.

This event will explore the policy arguments from opposing perspectives on gas exports and feature a luncheon address by Indian Ambassador Nirupama Rao, who has been an advocate for US natural gas exports.

There is great lamentation these days about the state of the multilateral trading system and its institutional symbol, the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Doha Round of multilateral negotiations has now dragged on for 12 years, with no end in sight on major issues. Now, attention is focused on salvaging a "mini" outcome when WTO trade ministers meet in Bali in December.

Since 2010, there have been 16 negotiating sessions for the TPP. Talks this year represent the beginning of the 'endgame' for creating this crucial trans-Pacific economic architecture. Should the upcoming bargaining reach a stalemate during the fall, it is likely that the whole project will begin to unravel in 2014.

Smugglers are adept at taking advantage of the myriad tariffs and tax rates between jurisdictions. With increasingly cheap globalized transport and tax free zones cropping up all over the globe, smugglers, terrorist financiers and organized crime have found boundless illicit opportunities.

The administration is misguided in bowing to the EU’s frantic plea for a crash, two-year timetable for free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations. Such a course will fail — and of much greater significance, it may well imperil a successful conclusion of the strategically and economically vital TPP negotiations.

There is a reason that it’s hard to find high-quality winter tomatoes from Mexico or textiles and apparel from poor countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Those markets have been largely closed off to the U.S., in an example of our government’s refusal to abandon old-fashioned 20th –century protectionism in agriculture and manufacturing.

US regional trade policy, as it has emerged since the early 1990s, has displayed two characteristics: a goal of deeper integration than could be achieved in multilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization; and the inextricable linkage between US international economic policy and broader US diplomatic and security goals.  These themes are evident particularly in US diplomacy in Asia.

Though it has neglected the region for brief periods over the past two decades, U.S. trade policy, linked to U.S. diplomatic and security policy, has made East Asia a central focus.