One year after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, the pact is back. The 11 remaining members expect to sign the final deal in March and hope to ratify it by 2019. Though significantly smaller since the United States pulled out, as measured by GDP and trade, the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is still a powerful pact in its own right.
In the first executive action of his presidency, Trump withdrew from the TPP, signaling to the world his commitment to his America First campaign promises. Since then, his administration has been seeking (with scant success) to promote bilateral trade deals, renegotiate existing trade deals, and impose trade restrictions to level the playing field for American businesses. Such actions have left the United States isolated on global trade, as the rest of the world has continued on with multilateral deals, notably the Japan-EU and EU-Mercosur agreements. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was meant to be the crowning jewel in a new age of global trade, writing the rules of the road for trade in the 21st century. Since Trumps reversal, that new age of global trade had been called into question.
But now the TPP is back and, barring a few bumps along the way, seems to have everyones commitment. So what is new about it, and what has stayed the same? ... When Trump withdrew from the TPP he also withdrew two of the most controversial provisions for which the United States had been advocating. One of the most ridiculed provisions in the TPP, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision, has been scaled back while a governments right to regulate its markets has been afforded increased protections. This was only possible after the United States withdrew from the deal: U.S. companies are the most frequent users of the measure, which allows companies to sue foreign governments over arduous regulations.
Another key provision the United States pushed for that has fallen to the side is the extension of copyright, or intellectual property, protections. Washington had negotiated for copyright to exist for the authors lifetime plus an additional 70 years. While this is standard in the United States, it is not in the other TPP members, and with Washington out of the deal, copyright lengths will be shorter.
The removal of these two provisions highlights what happens when the United States is not involved in regional affairs: the region moves on without it. The United States under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama was the prime advocate for the two heavily unpopular provisions. Under President Trump, the remaining 11 members of the TPP were able to cast off policies they considered harmful to their economies and governments.
