Ron Kirk: “Congressman, it will certainly open up more markets, particularly in services Russia is committed to.”

They have made some great strides in the last several years, and they acknowledge that it is because of U.S. support and investment and cooperation that they've been able to make some tremendous progress there.

Our ambition, at least among the nine countries that initially decided to go down this road together, was let us not wait on what is going to happen in Doha or APEC; let us try and develop a new trade model for the twenty-first century…

The credibility we gained by the strong vote in this Congress on the three FTAs sort of answered the questions from some of our negotiating partners.

We are going to try to get the strongest provisions that we can, and understand, this is one where we have some of the strongest headwind because of some of the other countries that frankly have a very different approach to this.