Trans Pacific Partnership

12 Key excerpts on "Trans Pacific Partnership"

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  The Asian Turn in Foreign Investment

  • Mahdev Mohan, Chester Brown(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Most importantly, the agreement achieves the goal we set forth of an ambitious, comprehensive, high standard and balanced agreement that will benefit our nation’s citizens. 77 The Ministers of the twelve signatory States went on to express the belief that: TPP brings higher standards to nearly 40 percent of the global economy. In addition to liberalizing trade and investment between us, the agreement addresses the challenges our stakeholders face in the 21st century, while taking into account the diversity of our levels of development. We expect this historic agreement to promote economic growth, support higher-paying jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living stand- ards; reduce poverty in our countries; and to promote transparency, good governance, and strong labor and environmental protections. 78 Thus, the TPP Agreement sought to enhance market access through the elimination of tariffs and other barriers to goods and services trade and investment. As Rahman and Brown have explained, the TPP Agreement ‘also sought to contain a number of innovative features which reflect the adoption of a holistic approach to regional economic liberalisation’. 79 In this regard, the TPP Agreement was to address ‘the concerns of small and medium-sized enter- prises regarding their understanding of the trade agreement so that small- to medium-sized businesses are better equipped to trade internationally through utilisation of the TPP Agreement’.

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  Trans-Pacific Partnership

  An Assessment

  • Cathleen Cimino-Isaacs, Jeffrey J. Schott, Cathleen Cimino-Isaacs, Jeffrey Schott(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Peterson Institute for International Economics

    (Publisher)

  Once in place, the TPP is likely to promote additional integration in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, with larger attendant gains. It is potentially a pathway to the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), which could include all APEC members and, based on our earlier studies, more than double the gains for the United States. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, in negotiation since 2013, would also have large effects. And broader global negotiations may pick up steam. These and other initiatives would benefit from competitive pressure from the TPP.

  This study, like the earlier work, addresses only economic issues, although of course geopolitical factors are also at stake. The TPP is a key element of the US rebalancing strategy toward the Asia-Pacific. The United States has had close economic and political relations with this region—for 70 years or more with some countries—and deeper economic ties and political stability in the Asia-Pacific are among its core interests.

  Given the scope and complexity of topics addressed, the diversity of the negotiating parties, and the backdrop of inaction on urgent trade issues, the TPP is a notable accomplishment. It is a substantial positive response to slowing world trade growth and rising trade barriers, and a major contribution toward a rules-based global economy.

  Appendix 1A

  The Computable General Equilibrium Model

  Computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis of the TPP accounts for interactions among firms, households, and governments in multiple product markets in several regions of the world economy. Firms and consumers are assumed to maximize profits and welfare subject to prices. The model, built from the GTAP 9 database and other data sources and calibrated to yield an initial solution that matches 2015 data, calculates prices that equate supply and demand for each product and factor of production in every market. As with most CGE models, it represents medium- and long-term changes and assumes normal employment; it does not incorporate features to analyze macroeconomic fluctuations. Table 1A.1

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  Trade between Developing countries of world

  • Jacinta Austin(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  The scope of this new generation comprehensive trade agreement covered the traditional barriers to trade in both goods and services, investment and other trade-related areas. These areas referred to formal restrictions related to trade and investment activities, intellectual property rights, labor and environmental standards and issues and challenges related to digital Economy-wide impact of TPP: New Challenges to China 189 technologies. In this form, the TPP deal could be the most important trade and investment pact that the world has witnessed since the creation of World Trade Organization (WTO) more than two decades ago (Schott 2013). The TPP agreement as signed in October 2015 appeared largely different from the several FTAs signed and implemented across the world in recent times. Some of the features which set this TPP agreement apart from the other trade agreements are: First, in terms of economic footprints in the world its members account for way larger share than those by most other recent trade agreements. The 12 member countries together account for 37.4% of world GDP, 11% of world population and 26.3% of total world trade in 2015. The intra-TPP trade accounts for 15.5% of total world trade (Table 1).

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  The Political Economy of New Regionalisms in the Pacific Rim

  • José Briceño-Ruiz, Philippe De Lombaerde, José Briceño-Ruiz, Philippe De Lombaerde(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  According to its National Development Plan 2013–2018, the participation of Mexico in the TPP was aimed at enhancing economic growth. But to the extent that the TPP was a relatively new process, misinformation about it compounded and distorted the expectations of top officials and the business press. Mexican Minister of Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo, declared that GDP would grow an extra 1.3% (El Financiero, 2015), without disclosing the methodology for his calculations. Given the secrecy of negotiations, many key areas of TPP remained obscure, although some were disclosed by WikiLeaks (2014). The contested topics were many, including Intellectual Property rights, the reform of state enterprises and competition policies.

  As of May 2017, this agreement had only been ratified by two out of the 11 remaining members (New Zealand and Japan). It must be pointed out that the signing of TPP in February 2016 brought one of the most comprehensive multilateral treaties ever negotiated one step closer to becoming a reality. In spite of the adverse conditions created by the departure of the US, the TPP may still survive. The remaining members have announced their intentions to move forward with the deal and TPP was replaced by the CPTTP in March 2018.

  The TPP, which has been under multilateral negotiation and membership expansion since 2008, would bring Mexico – who joined negotiations in 2012 – into a comprehensive trading relationship with ten other states of the Pacific Rim: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Mexico already has signed FTAs with almost half of those countries (Canada, Chile, Japan, Peru). Before the exit of the United States, the scope, scale and provisions of TPP were perhaps only matched by the TTIP, or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which was under negotiation between the US and the European Union (EU). In its current form, the CPTPP will most likely be dwarfed by China’s competing agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which is in the process of negotiation. The RCEP includes seven members of the TPP (Japan, Australia New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam) plus Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, South Korea, India and China (CNN, 2017).

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  Global Political Economy

  Theory and Practice

  • Theodore H. Cohn, Anil Hira(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In 2008, President George W. Bush indicated that the United States would begin trade talks with a small group of Pacific Rim countries that had signed a trade agreement, and the group gradually increased to 12 countries. President Barack Obama continued the talks, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed in 2012 by the 12 countries which accounted for about 40 percent of world GDP: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. The TPP was designed to promote trade liberalization well beyond what was achieved in the WTO, and would involve difficult reforms for the member countries’ economies. In geopolitical terms, the Obama administration viewed the TPP as important in countering China’s growing influence in Asia. China would not consider joining it because of the trade liberalization required. U.S. proponents also viewed the TPP as crucial because an alternative agreement was being negotiated. China is closely involved with a proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). In 2013, the RCEP idea was announced, which would include China, the 10 members of ASEAN, and five other countries in the region. The RCEP would be much less ambitious than the TPP in terms of depth and scope of liberalization. Since the RCEP is limited to Asia-Pacific countries, it would marginalize the United States. The TPP proved to be highly controversial during the 2016 Presidential campaign, with both Republican and Democratic candidates criticizing it. Opponents argued that it would increase the U.S. trade deficit, push U.S. manufacturing jobs elsewhere, and not deal with currency manipulation by some other traders. When President Trump took office in January 2017, one of his first actions was to pull the United States out of the TPP

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  Changing Orders in International Economic Law Volume 1

  A Japanese Perspective

  • Dai YOKOMIZO, Yoshizumi TOJO, Yoshiko NAIKI, Dai YOKOMIZO, Yoshizumi TOJO, Yoshiko NAIKI, Dai Yokomizo, Dai Yokomizo(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Suami, 2009 , pp. 169–170). As a consequence, a dense network of regional FTAs gradually extended, and almost all countries in this region had taken part in the FTA network through several FTAs by 2010. In particular, ASEAN had become a network hub through a series of the ASEAN+1 agreements with many countries in this region. The landscape of regional economic order further progressed in the 2010s. Against the backdrop of the stalemate of the Doha Round, Asian-Pacific countries started negotiations for regional mega arrangements for trade and investment and arrived at the two major FTAs: CPTPP, effective in December 2018, and RCEP, effective in January 2022. The region is now covered by these agreements, which are examined hereafter.

  The Renovation from TPP to CPTPP and Its Expansion

  CPTPP is the successor of TPP and has extensive geographical coverage by 11 member states (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam). After the withdrawal of the US from TPP, which made the coming into effect of TPP impossible, the remaining 11 members continued negotiations and concluded a new agreement named CPTPP. CPTPP has taken over most of the provisions of TPP. However, it suspends some of the TPP provisions (for example, several provisions in the intellectual property chapter, most of which are Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)-plus provisions requested by the US; CPTPP, Art. 2). TPP was often regarded as a new model for future twenty-first century trade agreements. This is because TPP was more advanced than other FTAs in terms of membership, the level of trade and investment liberalization, and the intervention in domestic regulatory policies. Certainly, CPTPP has lost some of its advantages due to the US withdrawal, but it has taken over the rest of TPP’s advantages by incorporating most of its provisions (CPTPP, Art. 1, Para. 2).

  As a consequence, CPTPP aims at the high standards of trade liberalization by establishing a free trade area for both goods and services, along with responding to various non-trade issues affecting trade and investment that have emerged in the progress of free trade. To level the playing field, CPTPP has introduced a number of provisions that regulate or influence domestic laws in a variety of policy fields such as telecommunications, electronic commerce, competition policy including consumer protection, state-owned enterprises, intellectual property, labor, the environment, anti-corruption, and regulatory coherence. Regulations on state-owned enterprises are new for this region (except for the European Union (EU)-Japan EPA). Although the rest of these policy fields were covered by existing FTAs, their disciplines in CPTPP are more advanced, specified, and/or detailed than those in former FTAs. CPTPP has gone beyond the existing model of FTAs and reached a new stage of regional integration. Therefore, CPTPP is often called a model for trade agreements in the new generation, and some of its provisions actually serve as references for other agreements including RCEP.

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  Outside the EU

  Options for Britain

  • Martin Westlake(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Agenda Publishing

    (Publisher)

  A full assessment of the impact of UK membership of the CPTPP is therefore currently not possible and any comprehensive study is beyond the scope of this chapter. A general assessment of the relative gains from potential CPTPP membership is therefore provided by a comparison between the EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and Japan’s commitments under the CPTPP. The chapter discusses some of the questions that will arise in any negotiation process. Finally, as the initiative to launch negotiations with the CPTPP (as well as the USA, Australia and New Zealand) is the first step towards a new independent trade policy for the UK, the chapter looks at what this tells us about how the UK might go about decision-making and negotiating future trade agreements.

  THE CPTPP

  The origins of the CPTPP go back to an initiative by the P4 (Brunei, Chile, Singapore and New Zealand) for the Trans-Pacific Strategic EPA that came into force in 2006. In 2008 negotiations began with eight other countries (the USA, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru and Australia) and in 2016 these signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This expansion was driven by the US decision to join in order to provide the economic underpinning of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”. This illustrates how PTA initiatives generally have political or strategic motivations, as indeed would appear to be the case in the UK initiative on CPTPP membership. In January 2017 the Trump administration opted out of the TPP in favour of negotiating bilateral agreements.2 The 11 other members of the TPP, however, elected to proceed without the USA and still account for 13 per cent of world gross domestic product (compared to 22 per cent for the EU) with a broadly equivalent market of 500 million people.

  The CPTPP is therefore essentially the TPP less some 20 provisions that have been “suspended”. Many of the 30 chapters of the CPTPP are carried over word-for-word from the TPP, with most changes to be found in the chapter on investment. In general terms, it is possible to distinguish between three broad approaches to PTAs.3 There is an EU approach, which is derived from the way the EU has done things internally and therefore tends to be comprehensive.4

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  The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

  Implications for Southeast Asia

  • Cassey Lee, Pritish Bhattacharya(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute

    (Publisher)

  As explained below, these results are supported by simulation studies similar to those conducted earlier for the TPP including the United States (Petri and Plummer 2016; Petri, Plummer, and Zhai 2012). From a geopolitical perspective, new Asia Pacific agreements will increase the leverage of individual countries against bilateral pressures and help keep trade liberalization on the global agenda. In time, these agreements will likely attract other partners, too. For example, if an eleven-member CPTPP agreement later admitted the five Asia Pacific economies that have expressed interest in the alliance in the past 3 (thus creating a TPP16), the total gains would rival those from the original agreement with the United States. Benefits could be further amplified if China, Europe, and/or the United States sought membership in the future. New agreements would also give members expanded influence over global rules. The withdrawal of the United States in some ways undermines but in others strengthens the rationale for Asia Pacific regional cooperation. Since the region’s economies have similar comparative advantages, improved access to the US market has long been a powerful incentive for concerted regional liberalization. Without the United States, regional negotiations have to manage competition among China, Southeast Asia and India with overlapping fields of comparative advantage. But the technological capabilities and global reach of Asia Pacific economies are growing rapidly, and the region has become central to global production systems. Meanwhile, the share of the United States in the exports of 14 Peter A. Petri, Michael G. Plummer, Shujiro Urata and Fan Zhai CPTPP countries has dropped from 40 to 35 per cent over the last two decades. The region has a growing stake in the world trading system and integration can enhance its global influence.

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  Reclaiming Our Future

  A Common Agenda for Advancing Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific

  • Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • United Nations Publications

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 4 TRADING AND INVESTING TOGETHER International trade and foreign investment have been key engines of growth in Asia and the Pacific, helping lift millions out of poverty. However, the multilateral trading system has come under increasing strain, leading to a proliferation of regional preferential trade agreements. The multilateral trading system needs to be updated to meet present-day and upcoming demands. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Development Round has failed to materialize, and its dispute resolution system has also become increasingly ineffective. The multilateral trading system has failed, for example, to achieve an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines or provide timely guidance on trade at a very difficult time. Faced with deficiencies in the multilateral trading system, countries in Asia and the Pacific have increasingly turned to regional trade agreements along with investment agreements and frameworks. These agreements typically have wider depth and coverage than the WTO rules, particularly in digital trade and e-commerce, and increasingly address social and environmental issues, which are not appearing to being resolved at WTO.¹ Among the regional trade agreements, economic partnership agreements are the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership² and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, both of which are described as mega-trade deals. Preferential trade agreements As of October 2021, approximately half the world’s 350 preferential trade agreements involved at least one Asia-Pacific economy, In fact, prior to COVID-19, all 12 free trade agreements that came into force in 2018 and 2019 involved Asia-Pacific economies.³ More modern types of agreements centred on digital trade and digital-economy integration, including the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement and the Australia-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement, 4 were among the 15 signed during 2020-2021.

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  Managing Globalization in the Asian Century

  Essays in Honour of Prema-Chandra Athukorala

  • Hal Hill, Jayant Menon(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  pharmaceutical lobby. These compromises suggest that the trade-off between preserving access to affordable medicines versus creating the incentives for pharmaceutical firms to continue to invest in research and development to produce these drugs, 1 would tend to favour the former. Different transition periods will also apply to copyright and trademark provisions. Furthermore, some countries even have the option to maintain current domestic rules when implementing TPP obligations. 4.5 Labour and Environment Standards The TPP prides itself as being the most progressive agreement ever because it explicitly deals with social issues such as labour and environment standards. The labour chapter calls on all TPP members to comply with internationally recognized labour rights, including the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. It also pushes for the adoption of laws governing minimum wages, The TPP Unveiled: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 283 hours of work, and occupational safety and health. Meanwhile, the environment chapter calls on TPP members to effectively enforce their domestic environmental laws. It also contains provisions to combat illegal logging and wildlife trafficking and to protect the marine environment. The agenda is so broad that some critics, like Krugman (2015) and Stiglitz and Hersh (2015), argue that it is not an FTA. In fact, the signing of the TPP by U.S. President Barack Obama was in doubt at one point, until the United States was able to suddenly upgrade Malaysia’s ranking and therefore remove it from its list of the world’s worst offenders of human trafficking. The concern with these standards relates to enforcement and implementation (Prokop 2015). The commitments in both the labour and environment chapter are subject to the dispute settlement procedures laid out in the dispute settlement chapter.

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  Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements: Volume 1

  Commentary and Analysis

  • Simon Lester, Bryan Mercurio, Lorand Bartels(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  72 In India, foreign policy considerations prevail. Similarly, on the African continent, PTAs with little substance or economic sense proliferate, raising serious implementation issues. The race for influence in Asia has crystallised in the negotiations of the Trans- Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) among APEC countries and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between China and the ten ASEAN countries together with India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, but not the US. Seven countries currently participate in both sets of negotiations: Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam. For the US, the TPP is clearly about reinforcing its political influence in Asia; for China, it is about ruling out some of the disciplines and standards promoted by the US and resisting the US encirclement strategy; for countries participating to both sets of negotiations, it is about protesting against the use of PTAs as foreign policy instru- ments and imperialistic rhetoric. In spite of these protests, given the incompatibility 68 Christopher Findlay, Mohd Hafleh Piei and Mari Pangestu, ‘Trading with Favorites: Risks, Motives and Implications of PTAs in Asia Pacific’, Background Paper to the Pacific Economic Co-operation Council (PECC) Trade Forum, 22–23 April 2003, Washington, DC, at p. 12. 69 Sheng-Cheng Hu (Minister of State and Chairman, Council for Economic Planning and Development, Executive Yuan), ‘Taiwan’s Economy and the Role of a US–Taiwan PTA’, Speech to the Annual Board of Directors of the US–Taiwan Business Council (28 November 2006), p. 3. 70 Gibbs and Wagle, above n. 63, at p. 4. 71 Razeen Sally, ‘FTAs and the Prospects for Regional Integration in Asia’, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) Working Paper No. 1, Brussels (2006) at p. 5. 72 Gibbs and Wagle, above n. 63, at p. 6. the political economy of ptas 47

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  Critical Review of the Abe Administration

  Politics of Conservatism and Realism

  • Yoichi Funabashi, Koji Nakakita, Yoichi Funabashi, Koji Nakakita, International House of Japan, International House of Japan(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  40 Still, the fact that President Trump, who had consistently ruled out the chance of a U.S. return to the TPP, hinted at such a possibility twice over a period of three months was proof that he felt the impact of the TPP 11 agreement to no small degree.

  6 The roles of RCEP and the Japan–EU EPA

  6.1 RCEP and negotiations with China

  The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a broad regional FTA between 15 countries in East Asia: the 10 ASEAN members, Japan, China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand (negotiations started out between 16 countries, but India dropped out of the talks in November 2019). Following 31 rounds of negotiation, 19 ministerial conferences, and three meetings of top leaders of the participant countries, an agreement was signed at the fourth RCEP summit meeting in November 2020, paving the way for the pact to enter into force on January 1, 2022.

  The RCEP negotiations were hampered by the wide gap between developed and developing economies in terms of their position on the degree of trade liberalization and economic rules concerning investment and e-commerce transactions. As a consequence, the target for concluding the agreement in 2015 was pushed back as many as five times. Particularly evident were the differences between Japan and China, which posed a major hurdle to the progress of the RCEP talks. The gap between the two countries was exemplified by the remarks made at the RCEP ministerial meeting in Manila in September 2017, when METI minister Hiroshige Seko stressed the importance of concluding a “high-quality agreement,” to which China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan quickly responded by saying the most important thing was to quickly conclude the agreement instead of spending time on the quality of the accord.41

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