The U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 per cent of the world’s economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties’ presidential contests.
But the accord — a product of nearly eight years of negotiations, including five days of round-the-clock sessions in Atlanta— is a potentially legacy-making achievement for President Barack Obama, and the capstone for his foreign policy “pivot” toward closer relations with fast-growing eastern Asia, after years of U.S. preoccupation with West Asia and North Africa.
Mr. Obama spent recent days contacting world leaders to seal the deal. Administration officials have repeatedly pressed their contention that the partnership would build a bulwark against China’s economic influence, and allow the U.S. and its allies — not Beijing — to set the standards for Pacific commerce. The Pacific accord would phase out thousands of import tariffs as well as other barriers to international trade. It also would establish uniform rules on corporations’ intellectual property, open the Internet even in communist Vietnam and crack down on wildlife trafficking and environmental abuses.
Several potentially deal-breaking disputes kept the ministers talking through the weekend and forced them repeatedly to reschedule the promised Sunday announcement of the deal into the evening and beyond. Final compromises covered commercial protections for drug-makers’ advanced medicines, more open markets for dairy products and sugar, and a slow phase-out — over two to three decades — of the tariffs on Japan’s autos sold in North America.
Yet the trade agreement almost certainly will encounter stiff opposition.
Its full 30-chapter text will not be available for perhaps a month, but labour unions, environmentalists and liberal activists are poised to argue that the agreement favours big business over workers and environmental protection. Donald Trump has repeatedly castigated the Pacific trade accord as “a bad deal”, injecting conservative populism into the debate and emboldening some congressional Republicans who fear for local interests like sugar and rice, and many conservatives who oppose Mr. Obama at every turn.
Long before an accord was reached, it was being condemned by both Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democrats’ nomination. Other candidates also have been critical. Ms. Clinton, who as Secretary of State promoted the trade talks, has expressed enough wariness as she has campaigned among unions and other audiences on the left that her support is now in doubt.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the partnership eventually would end more than 18,000 tariffs that the participating countries have placed on U.S. exports, including autos, machinery, information technology and consumer goods, chemicals and agricultural products ranging from avocados in California to wheat, pork and beef from the Plains states.
Japan’s other barriers, like regulations and design criteria that effectively keep out U.S.-made cars and light trucks, would come down.
The parties to the accord also include New Zealand, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.
