Trade ministers today came together to sign an international agreement that sets landmark trade standards between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the largest regional trade deal in history. The Partnership — which draws up a trade pact for Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam — effectively comprises up to 40 percent of the world’s economy. According to the New York Times, the agreement is “a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards.”
The Partnership, the result of years of negotiations, would eliminate thousands of trade tariffs, update rules on e-commerce, provide new protections for corporations’ intellectual property and crack down on environmental abuses.
The U.S. government estimated the agreement would add $223B to the global economy within the next decade.
Proponents of the Partnership claim it would enact new international labor standards for workers, would give member countries access to new economic opportunities and would provoke historic global investment. Environmentalists have praised several key measures in the plan, specifically, updated wildlife protections against the illegal trafficking of many animals species.
Opponents claim the deal would hurt competition for domestic goods and could encourage further job outsourcing. Of particular contention is the issue that the Partnership may give too much power to multinational corporations: one provision in the Partnership allows the use of special tribunals that corporations may use to settle regulatory disputes with member countries.
The trade agreement is a huge win for President Obama, who has championed the Partnership for years. In order for the pact to be accepted stateside, however, the Trans-Pacific Partnership now faces Congress, where a fierce debate is expected to unfold, as members on both sides of the aisle have voiced opposition to it.
Vermont Senator and Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has already vowed to fight the trade deal, calling it "disastrous."
In a case of strange bedfellows, the Partnership has also drawn the ire of Donald Trump, who went to Twitter to call the plan “an attack on America's business,” and “a bad deal."
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