TPP Proposes Intriguing Changes in US IP Law

[3] Office of the United States Trade Representative, “TPP Final Text: Chapter 19-Labour [sic]”, https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/TPP-Final-Text-Labour.pdf (accessed November 12, 2015). We see the FTAAP study as the way we can judge where all those initiatives are going.

China has also signed FTAs with 20 or so countries, from Switzerland to Chile. The overall agreement runs to roughly 6,000 pages, with over 50 side letters containing additional deals and carve-outs. With momentum building for other major Asian economies to join, it is likely the TPP and not the RCEP will anchor the guidelines for a wider comprehensive Asia-Pacific free trade pact. Hillary Rodham Clinton opposes it, too, and hopes you’ll forget she once called it “the gold standard” of trade deals.

But the FTAAP has not advanced far. The result predictably values the rights of corporations over the needs of workers and fails to address the most glaring weakness of past trade deals: “the utter failure of the parties to uphold their commitments to respect workers’ rights”.

“There are four priorities that have been discussed at the ministerial meeting”.

The TPP, which covers 40 percent of the world’s economy, also sets rules for medicines that threaten the health security of millions of Texans. And the solution reached in the TPP provides a ready-made template for a European trade deal.

The RCEP will take longer but its deadline for the agreement is the end of this year. A manufacturing sector that produces everything from potato chips and snacks to dairy, sugars, and fats and oils, these businesses would be among the big beneficiaries of TPP.

Deeper regional economic integration offers us a possible way out of the current situation. Its incremental approach can accommodate member countries’ different levels of development, analysts say.

‘Given the potentiality of the TPP, it is imperative that Vietnam focus its efforts on developing a national rice brand to bolster the competitiveness of the nation’s rice industry, ‘ said Deputy Head Pham Van Du of the Department of Crop Production. The trade pact and South China Sea may dominate discussions. Thanks to the TPP, those taxes will drop drastically, a lot of them to zero.

The primary objective of TPP is to eliminate barriers to trade. While the terms of the RCEP have yet to be concluded, early details suggest it lacks the TPP’s depth, especially on issues pertaining to services trade, state-owned enterprises and enforcement provisions. And like any trade agreement, it creates winners and losers.

The TPP will, accordingly, bring the United States and Japan closer in a region perennially troubled by their common rival, China.

And it requires APEC-the premier organization in the region for advancing free and open trade, as well as accelerating progress towards our shared goals of fighting climate change, strengthening community resilience to disasters, combating corruption, empowering women entrepreneurs, and energizing truly inclusive growth – that APEC continue to fulfill its extraordinary potential.

But it won’t be easy.

Mellahi said countries that had signed up for multiple treaties would have to navigate each set of rules carefully.

Asked why these countries were showing a sudden interest to join the TPP, Mustapa said: “One country mentioned that it had no other choice as many other countries have done the same and it does not want to be left out”.

Past trade agreements have made the same claims, says Dan Jacoby, a professor of economics and labor at the University of Washington, but reality didn’t live up to the rhetoric.

“Mexico for example is a member of 45 FTAs and this has actually made it more attractive to automotive investors”, Lim said.