All You Need To Know About The Trans-Pacific Partnership

“Today’s release… provides the Australian public with an opportunity to examine the text and more fully understand any areas of the negotiation that are of interest to them” Mr. Robb said.

Anchor: Seoul says free trade agreements it has reached with the United States and other countries will shield its exports from being squeezed out by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The text details plans for handling of trade of all types of materials including live eels.

The 6000-page legal text of the agreement was released late last night, and critics say it won’t mean much to most people because of its complexity. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) remains extremely concerned about the inclusion of risky provisions that would dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in global law and restrict access to price-lowering generic medicines for millions of people.

There’s no guarantee the pact won’t raise hackles with a few US lawmakers, who have questioned whether it would help USA exports and create jobs or just expose more American workers to low-wage competition.

On Thursday, Obama formally announced his intention to sign the deal. Several candidates, including Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and Republican Donald Trump, have come out strongly against the TPP.

The deal will take effect within 60 days of all countries finishing necessary implementation work, or once six countries accounting for 85 percent of the bloc’s economic output have ratified the agreement, if not all are ready after two years.

“Along with the landmark North Asian bilateral trade agreements we have concluded with China, Japan and South Korea, the TPP forms a transformational series of agreements that will contribute substantially to the diversification of our economy in this critical post mining boom phase”.

Democratic Representative Rosa De Lauro has been one of the leading members of the president’s own party organizing opposition to the TPP. The agreement also calls for labor protections such as ensuring that workers in member countries have the right to form unions.

He said the deal would “contribute significantly to the diversification of [Australia’s] economy” and would decrease the requirement to rely on a single sector or marketplace, “regardless of how powerful they are”.

A large and controversial part of the TPP is “regulatory harmonisation”, or where the Pacific Rim agreement seeks to standardise rules and regulations across the borders of the 12 nations.