Pacific Rim countries negotiating a free trade deal will find it hard to make much progress while the United States and Japan remain at loggerheads over farm exports, Mexico's economy minister said. During a visit to Washington, Ildefonso Guajardo said U.S.-Japan bilateral talks underway in Japan were key to reaching agreement on other outstanding issues in the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and any agreement would have a domino effect on the rest of the pact. The United States insists that Japan lower barriers to agricultural imports, but Japan wants to protect sensitive products including pork, beef, dairy and sugar. The last round of talks ended in a stalemate. Guajardo said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman was keen for other TPP partners to move ahead and resolve other outstanding issues, including common standards on intellectual property rights, but he not know if this was possible since market access was the top incentive for most other countries. "We are willing to work very closely with the U.S. and Canada on what basically is the U.S. strategy but unfortunately just by experience I don't know how the rest of the countries are going to come to the table ... to close everything else but market access," he said at a Woodrow Wilson Center event. Guajardo, who met Froman on Monday, said he told him he hoped for "very good news" out of Tokyo to allow negotiations to move toward wrapping up this year. (Reuters)