The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, is a multilateral free trade agreement that aims to further liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region; specifically, Article 1.1.3 notes: “The Parties seek to support the wider liberalisation process in APEC consistent with its goals of free and open trade and investment.”[1] The original agreement between the countries of Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore was signed on June 3, 2005, and entered into force on May 28, 2006. Six additional countries – Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Japan, United States, and Vietnam – are negotiating to join the group. On the last day of the 2010 APEC summit, November 14, leaders of the nine negotiating countries endorsed the proposal advanced by United States President Barack Obama that set a target for settlement of negotiations by the next APEC summit in November 2011.[2] On the 11th November 2011 the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, announced negotiations to join.[3]
The TPP was previously known as the Pacific Three Closer Economic Partnership (P3-CEP), its negotiations launched on the sidelines of the 2002 APEC Leaders' Meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, by Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Prime Ministers Goh Chok Tong of Singapore and Helen Clark of New Zealand. Brunei first took part as a full negotiating party in the fifth round of talks in April 2005, after which the trade bloc became known as the Pacific-4 (P4).
Although all original and negotiating parties are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the TPP is not an APEC initiative. However, it is considered as a pathfinder for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an APEC initiative. TPP negotiations have occurred on the sidelines of APEC summits since 2002.
The objective of the original agreement was to eliminate 90 percent of all tariffs between member countries by January 1, 2006, and reduce all trade tariffs to zero by the year 2015. It is a comprehensive agreement covering all the main pillars of a free trade agreement, including trade in goods, rules of origin, trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, trade in services, intellectual property, government procurement and competition policy.[4]
Contents |
The negotiations initially included just three countries (Chile, New Zealand and Singapore), but Brunei subsequently joined the agreement. The original TPP agreement contains an accession clause and affirms the members' "commitment to encourage the accession to this Agreement by other economies."
In February 2008 the United States agreed to enter into talks with the P4 members regarding liberalization of trade in financial services.[5] Then, on September 22, 2008, U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab announced that the United States would begin negotiations with the P4 countries to join the TPP, with the first round of talks scheduled for early 2009.[6] Commenting on the announcement, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark stated, "I think the value to New Zealand of the United States coming into a transpacific agreement as a partner would be of the same value as we would hope to get from a bilateral FTA. . . It's very, very big news."[7]
In November 2008, Australia, Vietnam, and Peru announced that they would also be joining the P4 trade bloc.[8][9] In October 2010, Malaysia announced that it had also joined the TPP negotiations.[10] Canada, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan have also expressed interest in TPP membership.[11][12][13][14][15]
| Country | Membership | Date of Accession/Declaration of Intention |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Negotiating | 20 November 2008 |
| Brunei | Original Signatory | 28 May 2006 |
| Chile | Original Signatory | 28 May 2006 |
| Japan | Negotiating | 11 November 2011 |
| Malaysia | Negotiating | October 2010 |
| New Zealand | Original Signatory | 28 May 2006 |
| Peru | Negotiating | November 2008 |
| Singapore | Original Signatory | 28 May 2006 |
| United States | Negotiating | February 2008 |
| Vietnam | Negotiating | November 2008 |
After the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009, the anticipated March 2009 negotiations were postponed. However, in his first trip to Asia in November 2009, President Obama reaffirmed the United States' commitment to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and on December 14, 2009, new U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk notified Congress that President Obama planned to enter TPP negotiations "with the objective of shaping a high-standard, broad-based regional pact".[16]
Since that time, six formal rounds of TPP negotiations have been held. The first round took place March 15–19, 2010, in Melbourne, Australia, the second round occurred June 14-18 in San Francisco, USA, a third round took place October 5–8, 2010, in Brunei, a fourth round was held December 6–10, 2010, in Auckland, New Zealand, the fifth round was from 14th-18th February 2011 in Santiago, Chile, while the sixth round was in Singapore from the 24th March to the 1st of April 2011.[17][18][19]
On the 11th November 2011, Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, announced Japanese negotiations to join the treaty.[3]
Canada is an observer in the TPP talks but has not committed to join, purportedly because the United States and New Zealand have specifically blocked it, supposedly due to concerns over Canadian agricultural policy, specifically on dairy.[20] Several pro-business and internationalist Canadian media outlets have raised concerns about this as a missed opportunity. In a feature in the Financial Post former Canadian trade negotiator Peter Clark claimed that the Harper government had been strategically out maneuvered by the Obama administration, Wendy Dobson and Diana Kuzmanovic for The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary argued for the economic necessity of the TPP for Canada.[21] Embassy warned that Canada's position in APEC could be compromised by being excluded from both the US-oriented TPP and the proposed China-oriented ASEAN +3 trade agreement.[22]
Japan is regarded as a potential future member but it would have to open its agricultural market in a way it refused to do in previous trade negotiations such as the Doha round.[20] Japan joined as an observer in the TPP discussions that took place November 13–14, 2010, on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Yokohama.[23]
South Korea was officially requested to join the TPP negotiating rounds by the United States after the successful settlement of the US-South Korea FTA.[24] The country already has bilateral trade agreements with other TPP countries, thus making any future multilateral TPP negotiation less complicated.
The TPP is most notable in that China is not among the initial countries negotiating the TPP, despite the fact that it is the largest economic power in Asia.
There has been criticism[25][26][27] of some provisions relating to the enforcement of patents and copyrights alleged to be present in leaked copies of the US proposal for the agreement:
Overall, the USTR proposal for the TPP intellectual property chapter would: (1) include a number of features that would lock-in as a global norm many controversial features of U.S. law, such as endless copyright terms. (2) create new global norms that are contrary to U.S. legal traditions, such as those proposed to damages for infringement, the enforcement of patents against surgeons and other medical professional, rules concerning patents on biologic medicines, disclosure of information from ISPs, etc. (We will work on a detailed list). (3) undermine many proposed reforms of the patent and copyright system, such as, for example, proposed legislation to increase access to orphaned copyrighted works by limiting damages for infringement, or statutory exclusions of "non-industrial" patents such as those issued for business methods.
At a public forum on 6 July 2011, legal experts in New Zealand presented their concerns that the agreement could undermine law regarding Māori culture, genetic modification, copyright, and remove the subsidised medicine New Zealanders have access to through Pharmac.[28]
Ken Akamatsu, creator of Love Hina and Mahou Sensei Negima!, expressed concern the agreement could decimate the derivative dōjinshi (self-published) works prevalent in Japan. Akamatsu argues that the TPP "would destroy derivative dōjinshi. And as a result, the power of the entire manga industry would also diminish." Kensaku Fukui, a lawyer and a Nihon University professor, expressed concerns that the TPP could allow companies to restrict or stop imports and exports of intellectual property, such as licensed merchandise. For example, IP holders could restrict or stop importers from shipping merchandise such as DVD's and other related goods related to an anime or manga property into one country to protect local distribution of licensed merchandise already in the country via local licensors.[29] At a NicoNico live seminar titled How Would TPP Change the Net and Copyrights? An In-Depth Examination: From Extending Copyright Terms to Changing the Law to Allow Unilateral Enforcement and Statutory Damages, artist Kazuhiko Hachiya warned that cosplay could also fall under the TPP, and such an agreement could give law enforcement officials broad interpretive authority in dictating how people could dress up. Critics also have derided the agreement could also harm Japanese culture, where some segments have developed through parody works.[30]
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||