NEW ORLEANS – On Tuesday, January 19, 2016, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Robert Holleyman, one of President Obama’s chief advisers on trade, and a Louisiana native, will be hosted by Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu and GNO, Inc., at 1100 Poydras St., Suite 3475, at 12:00 p.m., for a roundtable discussion with business and community leaders about how President Obama’s top trade priority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will help Louisianans export more Made-in-America products to the world and support more high-paying jobs here at home.
Government reps said the TPP is a groundbreaking new trade agreement that will gain Americans unprecedented access to the Asia-Pacific region by cutting over 18,000 taxes various countries put on Made-in-America products. The said the deal will also level the playing field for American workers and businesses by setting high-standard rules across the region, including groundbreaking protections for intellectual property, labor rights, a free and open internet and many other areas.
Tuesday’s event falls one week after President Obama’s final State of the Union address, in which the President called for passage of the TPP and said that the deal will “open markets, protect workers and the environment, and advance American leadership in Asia.”
Building on the President’s call for approval of the TPP, Ambassador Holleyman will highlight both how exporting Made-in-America products is currently benefitting the Louisiana economy as well as how the TPP is aimed at growing those benefits for New Orleans and the entire state. For example, in 2014 Louisiana exported $64.8 billion in Made-in-America goods to the world, supporting over 17,000 high-paying jobs. Seventeen and an half billion, or 27 percent of those exports, went to TPP countries. Also, the New Orleans metropolitan area is the 8th largest export market in the United States.
Ambassador Holleyman, Mayor Landrieu and GNO Inc. will be joined by business and community leaders from throughout Louisiana for the discussion.
View a Department of Commerce fact sheet about the TPP in Louisiana here
View a White House fact sheet on the TPP here
