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.”
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 President Obama that set a target for settlement of
negotiations by the next APEC summit in November 2011.
On the 11th November 2011 the Japanese Prime
Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, announced negotiations to join.
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.
Membership
and accession
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.
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.
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."
In November 2008, Australia, Vietnam, and Peru
announced that they would also be joining the P4 trade bloc.
In October 2010, Malaysia announced that it
had also joined the TPP negotiations.
Canada, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea,
and Taiwan have also expressed interest in TPP membership.
Negotiations
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 in Santiago, Chile, while the sixth round was in Singapore
from the 24th March to the 1st of April 2011.
On the 11th November 2011, Japanese Prime
Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, announced Japanese negotiations to join the treaty.
Relations
with potential members
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
The country already has bilateral trade
agreements with other TPP countries, thus making any future multilateral TPP
negotiation less complicated.
Sources:
Wikipedia
Singapore Government
http://www.fta.gov.sg/fta_tpfta.asp?hl=12Business & Investment Opportunities
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