The dream of a “high-quality, twenty-first century ” deal

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks were launched with optimism in March 2010. This Agreement would be something different. It would be “high-quality, twenty-first century.” It would tie together a group of like-minded countries at differing levels of economic development on three different continents.

Most importantly, because the participants were all in Melbourne voluntarily, they were all united by a shared sense of purpose and a common commitment to the same goals and objectives. They would create a new preferential trade agreement (PTA) without getting bogged down in the same old arguments. They could address some of the long-standing issues that were creating problems in the WTO talks in Geneva and that could not be addressed in bilateral PTA negotiations. They would start to address some “behind-the-border” obstacles to trade that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) had been discussing for years. They could pull in some of the proposals that had been languishing in the WTO. The TPP could demonstrate to others how closer trade cooperation could be achieved.

A larger deal in the region would certainly be more trade-friendly than the present patchwork of smaller, criss-crossing and confusing agreements that had emerged in the past decade. The TPP could “tame the tangle” of overlapping PTAs and help business facilitate trade.