Federal Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, has today suggested that negotiations for the flawed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – the proposed regional trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries, including Australia – could be finalised by the end of the year. From The AFR:
“We are a very long way down the track. In fact I’d say that with the whole deal we are about 90 per cent of the way there,” Mr Robb said on Tuesday in the US capital.
“I think we could conclude the basics of the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] agreement before the end of the year. It’s that close, with political will.”
Andrew Robb has been a big supporter of the TPP since taking up his post, previously describing the deal as a “platform for 21st-century trade rules”, and hailing the TPP as “ambitious” and “reducing protection”.
Thankfully, Robb’s end of year deadline does not look realistic. The US congress has yet to grant President Obama “fast track authority” to conclude negotiations, which would allow Obama to sign the agreement without debate in congress. And until fast track authority is granted, which appears highly unlikely given widespread domestic opposition to the TPP within the US, the TPP is effectively dead in the water.
Regular readers will know that I am a staunch critic of the TPP and fear that it would establish a US-style regulatory structure that would hand considerable power to US pharmaceutical and digital firms, limiting choice and raising prices for consumers in Australia.
I am also not alone in my concerns.
Former World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general, Supachai Panitchpakdi, has slammed the TPP, claiming that it represents a step backwards to the days before the WTO when the US and Europe controlled the global trading system to the detriment of other economies.
Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, raised similar fears in an open letter posted last year, whereby he questioned negotiators’ secrecy and warned about “grave risks on all sorts of topics” posed by the TPP, as well as claiming that it contains “many of the worst features of the worst laws in the TPP countries, making needed reforms extremely difficult if not impossible”.
Paul Krugman, another nobel prize winning economist and trade expert, has also slammed the TPP, noting that it would “increase the ability of certain corporations to assert control over intellectual property [including] drug patents and movie rights”. Krugman also claimed that “there isn’t a compelling case for this deal, from either a global or a national point of view”, and that the “economic case is weak, at best”, with “the push for T.P.P… weirdly out of touch with both economic and political reality”.
That Andrew Robb is so intent to sign Australia up to the TPP suggests he cares more about his own ego than doing what is best for the nation.
