The City of Atlanta announced that Mayor Kasim Reed met with President Barack Obama at the White House Oval Office to discuss how the Trans-Pacific Partnership can benefit American workers and business and further our national security. Business, government and military leaders joined the meeting, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, Ohio Governor John Kasich, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Chairwoman, President and CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty, and Admiral James Stavridis, Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. Today’s discussion centered on how high-standards trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership are critical to ensuring that American workers can compete and win in a global, interconnected economy and furthering America's strategic and security interests abroad.
 
“I was honored to join President Barack Obama and other leading business, government and national security experts in supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership today,” said Mayor Reed. “The City of Atlanta hosted the final round of negotiations for the TPP, which sets high labor and environmental standards and will be the most progressive trade agreement in our nation’s history. Atlanta businesses thrive on exports, and access to expanded overseas markets means more opportunities for our businesses to grow and create well-paying, family-supporting jobs. I am confident that the President’s trade agenda will help promote more economic success in Atlanta and Georgia, and I support his efforts to pass robust trade enforcement legislation.”

The meeting's attendees represent decades of leadership and a wide breadth expertise as well as a bipartisan range of political views. In that regard, they are representative of the broad coalition that has come together to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Small Business Association, more than100 mayors across the country, the Farm Bureau, economists and academics and a sizeable roster of national security experts.

Mayor Reed spoke to how small businesses in Atlanta and the metropolitan region can benefit from expanded access to overseas markets. Atlanta was selected to host the final round of negotiations for the TPP in October 2015 before the agreement was finalized in February of this year.

In Atlanta, small businesses are the backbone of the local economy, and the primary engines of growth and innovation. Small businesses that export to foreign markets grow faster, create more jobs and pay higher wages than small businesses that serve purely domestic markets. Yet, these companies rely on international trade rules to access overseas markets, and without fair trade rules, Atlanta-based and American businesses face unfair disadvantages. The TPP will reduce barriers to small business exports by cutting tariffs and reducing non-tariff barriers, opening the fastest growing region in the world to our small business exports.