Macroscope | Uncertainty over ratifying transpacific trade deal
Last week the dozen parties to the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership released the full text of their agreement – more than 30 days after it was announced. The delay did not help the protagonists of a deal already encountering strong headwinds from multiple sources, especially in the United States. The secrecy surrounding the negotiations has not helped either.
The main text of the TPP (signed by the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Vietnam) contains thirty chapters and runs to some 600 pages. The annexes make it a lot weightier still. Replete with daunting detail, the agreement covers many issues that are familiar fare in trade agreements.
Despite the limitations of TPP ... the emptiness and leadership vacuum implied by failure is perhaps more threatening than the imperfections of success
But it also contains novel and more far-reaching features, which would seem to vindicate President Barack Obama’s characterization of the TPP as a high water mark in preferential trade diplomacy.
Among its significant new features – just to take some of the more salient examples – are the provisions on digital trade, state-owned enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, regulatory coherence, and anti-corruption and transparency.
Most of the articulated opposition to the TPP comes from the United States, although interest groups in the 11 other signatory nations doubtless have their reservations. Resistance in the US emanates from those who say the deal does not go far enough as well as those asserting that it goes too far. Sometimes these critics are one and the same.
Unsurprisingly, most of the contentious issues prolonged the negotiations beyond repeated deadlines. These include the duration of data exclusivity provisions for biologic medicines, a variety of agricultural products including dairy, rice and sugar, and autos and auto-parts.
