This morning I flew back to Bangkok and after lunch I met with Dr. Nipon Poapongsakorn, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat University. He had done some research on the possibility of a U.S. – Thailand Free Trade Agreement several years ago. We both agreed that without the president having Trade Promotion Authority the possibility of an agreement is slim. However, he thinks that U.S. beef and wheat could have a lot to gain if an FTA was signed. Since these are the two commodities I produce I was glad to hear this. Some sticking points in the negotiations might be our sugar quotas and intellectual property rules. With food prices high and the increased production of energy crops like cassava, sugarcane and oil palm a free trade agreement is more likely from the Thai side and the government is in favor of one. We had a really good discussion.
Tomorrow I fly home and it is really late here now. I will get almost no sleep as it is so I better end this for now. I will post at least one summary after I get home and have time to think a bit.
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2 comments:
Welcome home, Hope! Have a great trip to Montana.
Thanks Erin!
We are back from Montana and we really enjoyed our visit. The Libby area is beautiful. I wish we had been closer to your place so we could have visited you. Maybe I will get Ryan motivated to go up that way again. He never wants to go anywhere but he loves it once we get there.
Hope
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