Preface

Preparations began for setting up a workshop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in late 2010. Invitations were sent to active scholars and experts who had been following the negotiations. This group met in February 2011 in Hong Kong, China. When we made a decision to produce a book, our aim was to capture the state of the negotiations, highlighting in particular several actual and emerging roadblocks on various issues, such as the difficulties concerning the TPP’s design and architecture and the sorts of issues which had already become negotiating issues. Gaps in the research of the Hong Kong group were identified at a post-mortem meeting, and further invitations were sent out to a number of other colleagues. In December 2011, the editors met again to review the drafts and to complete the task of making a whole of the individual parts of the project.

In terms of the book’s organization, we have set out the papers according to a temporal framework. Part II deals with precursors and past events, which are an inevitable part of a proper understanding about where we are. Part III is a snapshot of the current negotiating issues: both actual issues and what we consider to be the sorts of things which must matter towards achieving the aim of laying down a twenty-first century template for future high-quality trade deals. Part IV looks to the future and, in particular, carries on the theme of what it means to speak of a high-quality deal.