This article was written for a Japanese academic journal, prior to the March 2011 earthquake.

On 15 March 2010 trade negotiators from eight countries met to begin formal talks on a free trade and investment treaty called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). Seven were full participants: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and the United States. Vietnam had associate status for the first three meetings; it became a full participant before the fourth round in Auckland, New Zealand in December 2010, as did Malaysia. The only other country that is seen as a serious possibility to join the negotiations is Japan. The decision on whether Japan will participate is scheduled for June 2011, before the seventh round of talks in Vietnam at the end of June. Japan’s participation will depend not only on its desire to participate, but also on its acceptance by the other parties.

Far Reaching Implications

A TPPA would have far-reaching implications for all participating countries. The proposed agreement has the potential to impose constraints on the policy and regulatory options of future governments that extend far beyond commodity trade to include public health, consumer rights, State-owned public services, the financial sector and much more. These impacts will be especially significant for countries that do not currently have a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, because it is US interests and negotiating power that will dominate the outcome.

Two objectives appear to be driving the proposed TPPA: one is commercial and the other is strategic. Both are of doubtful merit. They have been presented as complementary, but political realism suggests otherwise. At one level, the agreement is presented as a commercial initiative that will secure greater market access and protections for exporters, investors and monopoly owners of intellectual property, and enhance economic integration across the participating countries. However, it seems unrealistic to expect any significant commercial gains. The domestic economies of most of the participating countries are already highly liberalised, deregulated and privatised. In addition, they have an extensive web of existing free trade treaties with each other. Most of the remaining restrictions on imports and protections for regulatory sovereignty are highly sensitive. Many are the result of hard fought domestic battles during the negotiation of FTAs with the US and conceding them in a TPPA would pose a serious political liability.

The strategic justification is the potential for a TPPA to provide a platform for a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), initially through the accession of other members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, including China, Russia and Canada, and ultimately by attracting Asian powers outside APEC, notably India. The TPPA is seen as a US-led counter-force to the influence of China in the region(1) and a way of ensuring that future regional integration is based on an Anglo-American style, market-driven model. Again, this rationale is flawed. It presumes that emerging Asian super-powers will sign up to a deal that the US and its allies have designed, even though most Asian members of APEC have repeatedly rejected such proposals over the past decade. (2)

The combination of justifications reveals a third conundrum: the commercial and strategic objectives revolve around the US. The American economy dominates the TPPA grouping and significant commercial gains will require the removal of protections for key sectors, especially agriculture. The US is also the centrepiece of the proposed FTAAP, which cannot proceed unless Congress approves the TPPA. Powerful US constituencies both support and oppose the agreement. The Congress will never approve a TPPA if it requires any significant new liberalisation from the US and if it does not contain major new concessions from its negotiating partners.

That is a high risk political strategy for the other parties: in the short term, because the governments of countries where the US makes aggressive demands will have to sell those terms to their own domestic constituencies; in the medium term, because studies by pro-market government agencies are casting doubt on the economic benefits of the bilateral free trade model (3)and in the longer term, because a TPPA locks countries for the indefinite future into a neoliberal paradigm that many view as socially, economically, environmentally and politically unsustainable in the 21st Century.(4) This article explains the context and scope of these negotiations and critiques the commercial and strategic rationale, with particular reference to the implications for Japan.

The TPPA Context

The traditional free trade model drew on the neoclassical theory of comparative advantage and focused on removing border barriers to commodity trade. Trade rules were extended over time to constrain government policies, practices and regulations whose economic impacts were seen as “non-tariff” barriers to trade in goods. The Uruguay Round of negotiations on the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) deepened the intrusion of “free trade” rules into the domestic domain through “trade-related” agreements on services, investment measures and monopoly rights over intellectual property. The scope, scale and impacts of these agreements and the supra-national jurisdiction of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) itself have generated a growing controversy; that overreach has contributed to the paralysis of the Doha round, which aims to extend the WTO’s coverage even further. The WTO succeeded GATT. Ed.

Since the early 2000s, bilateral and regional free trade agreements have assumed a far greater importance. (5) They are generally easier to negotiate, especially when the power relationship between the parties is highly asymmetrical. The resulting agreements impose disciplines on government policy and regulatory options in a far broader range of areas than the WTO. Although FTAs follow a range of formats, countries that negotiate with the US or European Union have to conform to their templates.

The legal framework for a TPPA is especially complex because the parties have an extensive web of FTAs with each other.(6) Notionally, the US, Australia, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam are acceding to the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (known as the P[acific]4) that Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei concluded in 2005. The “accession” process began in March 2008 after the Bush Administration announced the US would join the negotiations on financial services and investment that were deferred in the original P4. At the APEC Leaders’ Forum in November 2008 Australia, Peru and Vietnam also joined. Malaysia followed in 2010. These negotiations involve nine parties, but it is the presence of the US that has drawn the other countries into this ambitious project and that underpins the strategic rationale. The US made it clear from the start that it expects to determine the shape of the negotiations and set the terms for any final agreement, building on its FTAs with Australia, Chile, Singapore and Peru.(7)

Viewing the Trans-Pacific “partnership” as an asymmetrical negotiation between the US and the other parties has major implications for Japan. First, domestic liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation in Japan has been far less extensive than in other TPPA countries; it will therefore be expected to adopt a long list of highly intrusive obligations that require radical domestic reforms. Second, Japan has been able to dictate the terms of its existing FTAs with developing countries, including with the ASEAN participants in the TPPA, and retain control over sensitive areas. By contrast, Japan has not been able to dominate its negotiations with Australia, which broke down in 2010 and faltered when talks resumed in 2011; it would have even less negotiating power in a multi-party TPPA. Third, Japan has a number of bilateral investment treaties (BITs), but not with the litigious US or other major capital exporting countries whose corporations will readily enforce Japan’s TPPA obligations through international arbitration.(8)

The Scope Of A TPPA

A lot of attention has centred on agriculture, and it is a crucial issue in the negotiations, but it is not the centrepiece of the TPPA. This is no ordinary “free trade” deal. It is expected to reach much more deeply into traditional policy and regulatory functions of government than even the existing FTAs.(9) The US forewarned the Japanese government of this at the US-Japan Trade Forum in January 2011 when it provided a detailed overview of the US approach under its past free trade agreements (FTAs) to highlight the level of ambition in some negotiating issue areas, such as market access and services that the United States typically achieves in its FTAs. … “The US government also explained to Japan that its broad goals for the TPPA exceed those which we have pursued in previous agreements”.(10)

Since the first formal round of negotiations in Melbourne in March 2010, the negotiators have been meeting in 21 working groups that range across business mobility, customs, competition, cooperation, e-commerce, environment, financial services, horizontal issues, government procurement, investment, intellectual property, labour, legal issues, market access, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, telecommunications and trade remedies.

These topics directly correlate to the policies and regulations that are targeted in the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) report on Japan’s Trade Barriers for 2010.(11) Significantly, the USTR devoted far more of the 18 pages to “sectoral regulatory reform” (in telecommunications, information technology, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, and financial services), “structural regulatory reforms” (in antimonopoly and competition policy, transparency, privatisation, commercial law, legal system reform and distribution), “government procurement” (in construction, architecture and engineering), “intellectual property rights” (in information technology, medicines and medical technologies), “services” (in insurance and banking, medical services and education), investment barriers, and transport (in civil and business aviation, transport and ports) than it did to traditional trade areas of import policies on agriculture and the automotive industry.

The TPPA As A Traditional “Trade” Agreement

The traditional “trade” aspect of the negotiations on market access for commodities aims to achieve zero tariffs in all products across all parties by 2015. Tariffs in Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Singapore are already very low or zero through a combination of unilateral liberalisation and FTAs. The US also has a generally low tariff regime. However, it has two areas of special sensitivity it will want to protect in the TPPA negotiations: textiles, principally from Vietnam, which opened its markets to the US under the WTO accession but received no equivalent concessions in return; and a range of agricultural products, in particular dairy, sugar and beef.

The market access outcomes will depend largely on how they are negotiated and whether there will be a common schedule that applies to all parties. The US insists that the schedules in its existing FTAs should remain in place and it will negotiate bilateral arrangements with TPPA parties that have no agreement with the US.(12) That will allow it to design market access schedules that are acceptable to its powerful domestic constituencies. In the Agreement with Australia, for example, the US refused to increase market access for Australian sugar and made only modest improvements for beef and dairy.(13) The Obama Administration wants to ensure that the Australian deal remains intact. However, the US dairy industry sees New Zealand exports as a greater threat, so the USTR wants bilateral negotiations that can allow it to deny New Zealand even the level of access for dairy products it guaranteed to Australia.(14)

The New Zealand and Australian governments have said that any deal must offer significant new market access, although this would not preclude long phase in periods. Yet the Obama Administration will not make concessions that cost it politically, especially with a Presidential election in 2012. In other words, if the non-US parties want a TPPA for strategic purposes they may have to accept a US-dictated outcome that delivers no significant commercial returns.(15) At the same time, all other TPPA parties will be pushed to deliver a “high quality” outcome that eliminates all tariffs by 2015, including on agriculture. The US and New Zealand have already blocked Canada’s participation in the talks because it was not prepared to consider dismantling the dairy and poultry marketing boards that are viewed as barriers to competition. Malaysia’s sensitivities over rice were a major reason why its earlier bilateral negotiations with the US broke down in 2007; the US will expect those tariffs to go in a TPPA.

While Japan’s participation is seen as important for both the commercial and strategic goals of a TPPA, the major agricultural exporting countries have insisted that Japan must be willing to make major concessions if it wants to join. Business media applauded New Zealand’s Prime Minister when he reportedly said before the APEC Leaders’ Meeting in Yokohama in November 2010 that he wanted Japan to join the talks “but only on our terms”. New Zealand was only interested in a “high quality, comprehensive” deal; if Japan was not prepared to put agriculture on the table, New Zealand did not want it there.(16) The Trade Minister later appeared to soften that stance: “We are watching this difficult political debate in Japan with great interest. There is a way forward for Japan that does not ask for the politically impossible on agriculture liberalisation.”(17) However, any flexibility is unlikely to apply to the ultimate goal of zero tariffs across the TPPA, but rather to transition periods. The bilateral negotiations with Australia are seen as a testing ground for Japan. The talks reconvened in February 2011, after an earlier breakdown and just four months before the June 2011 decision on a TPPA; reportedly made no progress was made on the agriculture issue.(18) In sum, the market access negotiations seem destined to aggravate the already fraught politics of agricultural liberalisation in Malaysia and possibly Japan, while the US exempts itself from the same fallout.

The TPPA As An Investment Agreement

A prominent feature of recent FTAs, including those negotiated by Japan, is the promotion and protection of foreign investor rights. Indeed, “investment” increasingly overshadows the “trade” dimension of these treaties. The mercantile interests of politically influential corporations are openly driving this aspect of the TPPA negotiations. In the US, corporate lobbies have a dominant role in a series of consultative committees that advise on trade negotiations.(19) They have formed a special US Business Coalition for TPP.(20) Many Coalition members have sister organisations or corporate subsidiaries in other TPP countries. The US Chamber of Commerce, APEC Business Advisory Council, Fedex (US) and Toll Holdings (Australia), among others, have directly briefed the TPPA negotiators behind closed doors.

While the private sector lobby aims for a new “gold standard” investment agreement, it is also concerned to ensure there is no rolling back of controversial provisions in existing FTAs. Vigorous debates on investment, financial services and intellectual property suggest this dimension of the negotiations will be as politically contentious as agriculture, including within the US itself. Before the 2008 election, Barack Obama promised to make significant changes to the investment rules in US trade agreements. The Obama Administration formed an advisory body of investment experts drawn from business, academia, labour, environmental NGOs and the legal profession, to review the 2004 version of the US Model Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). The group was highly polarised: corporate representatives opposed virtually any changes to the existing model; public interest organisations recommended a significant overhaul.(21) These divisions were reflected in final report tabled in September 2009.(22) The new model BIT was to be completed by the end of 2009. As of February 2011, the Obama Administration was still consulting members of Congress to build consensus. The text prepared in the US-P4 negotiations was carried through to the TPPA, and is based on the contentious old template.

Investor rights provisions are equally controversial in other countries inside and outside the TPP parties.(23) That is especially (but not solely) because of the ability of foreign investors to sue governments directly in international arbitral tribunals, where they can claim monetary damages for alleged breaches of vaguely worded investor protections.(24) Provisions on indirect expropriation and “fair and equitable treatment” can expose a government to legal action where new regulations result in a loss of share value or anticipated profits.(25) Just the threat of a dispute can have a “chilling effect” on governments pursuing sound economic, social or environmental regulation.

Corporations are not subject to the same diplomatic constraints as states; for example, the USTR has persistently complained that Japan Post’s insurance and banking operations breach Japan’s obligations under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services,(26) but no complaint has been laid. Under a TPPA, US corporations like AIG and Citigroup could launch a case in the World Bank’s secretive International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes seeking damages for loss of asset value and expected profits if the privatisations do not proceed as planned.

Even though investor powers are standard in most international investment agreements, they become much more potent when litigious US firms can use them. The Australian government resisted investor-state enforcement in its FTA with the US, under pressure from a concerted national campaign; so did Vietnam in the Australia New Zealand ASEAN FTA. There is a growing civil society campaign to exclude such powers from a TPPA and roll them back in existing FTAs,(27) something the corporations resolutely oppose.

Targets For “Roll-Back”

A second target for “roll-back” is the liberalisation and deregulation of financial markets and capital flows, which was a significant causal factor in the latest financial crisis. The Stiglitz Commission of experts, appointed by the United Nations to report on responses to the crisis, criticised the removal of regulatory space that governments need to secure the stability of their financial systems. The Commission recommended a review of all trade agreements “to ensure that they are consistent with the need for an inclusive and comprehensive international regulatory framework which is conducive to crisis prevention and management, counter-cyclical and prudential safeguards, development, and inclusive finance.”(28)

Prominent international economists have also criticised the constraints on capital controls that are a standard feature of US agreements, especially in light of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) recent acceptance that such controls are legitimate tools to counter financial instability. A letter from 250 economists, including a Nobel Prize winner, former IMF economists and other prominent experts, in January 2011 provoked the US Chamber of Commerce into a vigorous defence of its commercial interests.(29)

The intellectual property negotiations have proved even more controversial than those on investment and finance. Leaked papers and texts reveal a sharp polarisation between US demands for unprecedented protections of monopoly rights over intellectual property and New Zealand’s attempt to retain flexibility for net technology importers.(30) Fundamental social policies are at stake, including medicine subsidies and generic-backed pricing mechanisms, open source software, secondary Internet Service Provider liability, and extended copyright terms for libraries and other educational purposes. This controversy builds on the recent Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), where a highly effective international campaign blocked US demands; the TPPA is seen as a backdoor way for the US to secure what it failed to achieve in ACTA.

The TPPA As A Vehicle For Meta-Regulation

The novelty of the proposed TPPA falls under the broad heading of “regulatory coherence”, which is intended to facilitate seamless production, supply, distribution, marketing and payments across all participating countries. The exact scope of “regulatory coherence” is vague, but it is expected to require a common commitment to light-handed, pro-market regulation and standards, and establish a mutual recognition regime that could result in a progressive ratcheting down of standards.

These principles are expected to infuse all aspects of the agreement, especially chapters on investment, cross-border services, financial services, competition, government procurement, intellectual property, telecommunications, e-commerce, sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade. It is clear from the USTR’s 2010 report on Japan’s “regulatory barriers” that these principles will potentially impact on almost every aspect of domestic policy and regulation. Agricultural supply chains will be special targets, including technical standards and testing,(31) distribution networks, and State-run procurement mechanisms.

“Regulatory coherence” will also privilege foreign corporations over national interests in the name of “transparency”. This is consistent with the call in the USTR’s 2010 report for US firms to have input into all stages of Japan’s policymaking, including participation in Government-appointed advisory groups. The right of foreign corporations to participate in the policy making process will be reinforced by their ability to sue governments that ignore their views and proceed to regulate in ways the corporations believe are unfair or undermine their commercial value.

These disciplines are especially important for a country like Japan, where deregulation is experimental and controversial. A binding TPPA could make it very difficult for the Government to respond effectively to regulatory failure. The agreement will be explicitly designed to remove the “political risk” that future governments may seek to reverse that trend in favour of a regulatory regime that pursues multiple social, environmental and economic objectives.

A Free Trade Area Of The Asia-Pacific

It is clear from this short overview that the TPPA negotiation will be complex and controversial. If it eventually reaches a conclusion, the non-US parties will have made massive concessions, presumably to advance the broader objective of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific. Support for that outcome is most fully developed in a joint study by the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the New Zealand Institute for International Affairs, which was released at the NZ-US Partnership Forum in Christchurch, New Zealand in February 2011.((32) The TPPA is seen as a way to bypass the slow-moving WTO and develop “high quality” investor rights, “best practice” behind the border disciplines, and principles to promote regulatory harmonisation. The US is urged to work with pro-liberalisation countries like Australia, Singapore and New Zealand to set a high level standard for liberalisation in the TPPA and proactively support accession by other APEC members. In the longer term, the TPPA would provide a “docking space” for non-APEC countries like India. The study clearly seeks to lower New Zealanders’ expectations, and deflect the focus of negotiations from the US to Asia:

“Much attention has been paid to the potential impacts of the TPP on the New Zealand and US dairy and meat sectors. ... New Zealand’s fundamental interest in the TPP is more strategic: to create options for a free flow of dairy products between all TPP signatories and new entrants from Asia as they seek to join. There is considerable scope for New Zealand and US primary producers to work together to build capacity, to help take advantage of the opportunities that an expansion of the TPP might bring about, and to become major suppliers to third country markets such as China, Japan, ASEAN and India”.(33) It also advises New Zealand to make major concessions to controversial US demands, because “challenging issues for New Zealand, such as a comprehensive and law-based approach to intellectual property rights, will also be vital for the passage of the TPP in the US Congress.”(34)

The study assumes that a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific can be achieved.(35) That ignores the troubled history of APEC. The negotiating parties to the TPPA are all APEC member “economies”. They have collectively failed to meet its defining, but non-binding, commitment in the 1994 Bogor Declaration to free trade and investment among the rich member economies by 2010 and 2020 for poorer ones. They have also rejected Australian-led attempts to promote the idea of an APEC-wide FTA based on the Anglo-American liberalisation and deregulation model. Why is it assumed that the same countries will be more inclined to agree if it is repackaged as a TPPA – and that TPPA parties should make major concessions to the US in that expectation?

Implications For Japan

The obvious question is why Prime Minister Naoto Kan apparently wants Japan to join the negotiations – especially when it has been very resistant to past proposals for an APEC-wide FTA. The Japanese government will be aware that the US and other TPPA parties will make far-reaching demands that require extensive revisions to Japan’s domestic law and policy. The Government’s motivation may be quite different from the other parties. A free trade agreement can operate as a backdoor means of forcing domestic restructuring on a reluctant populace and national legislature. Because the treaty text does not become public until the deal has been signed and it is politically very difficult to change, the Government can avoid public scrutiny, informed debate among experts and democratic accountability. The resulting TPPA obligations would be enforceable not only by State parties, but also by foreign corporations seeking large awards of compensatory damages.

A groundswell of concern about the veil of secrecy surrounding the negotiations has resulted in a TPP-wide call for the parties to release the draft texts and country position papers after each round.(36) As the parties themselves say, this is no ordinary deal. All the governments involved in the TPP project are taking major risks with the future of their nations. The 21st Century is a time of great instability and uncertainty. Governments need the flexibility to respond to crises and to reverse failed experiments in liberalisation and deregulation. A TPPA is explicitly designed to prevent that from occurring. By locking the door against prudent re-regulation and democratic lawmaking processes, the agreement itself becomes a recipe for instability and a potential political liability for future governments that are bound to comply with unwise obligations that were undertaken in secret by a previous administration.

Endnotes

1. Paul Buchanan, “Security Implications Of The TPPA”, in Jane Kelsey, ed. “No Ordinary Deal. Unmasking The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement”, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 2010
2. Jane Kelsey, “APEC And Free Trade Agreements In The Asia Pacific”, http://www.aprnet.org/conferences-a-workshop/policy-research-conference-on-trade/201-apec-and-free-trade-agreements-in-the-asia-pacific
3. That was the view of the Australian Productivity Commission, “Bilateral And Regional Trade Agreements: Final Report”, December 2010, http://www.pc.gov.au/projects/study/trade-agreements/report
4. Even the political leaders of Australia, New Zealand and the US publicly questioned the neoliberal model in the wake of the global financial crisis; see Jane Kelsey, “Introduction”, in Kelsey, “No Ordinary Deal”, pp.10-11
5. Christopher Dent, “New Free Trade Agreements In The Asia-Pacific”, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
6. The US has comprehensive FTAs with Australia, Chile, Peru and Singapore, the four most significant of its trading partners involved in the TPPA. Vietnam has a framework agreement with the US and made extensive concessions during its accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). New Zealand, Malaysia and Brunei do not have FTAs with the US. But New Zealand has comprehensive agreements with all the other negotiating parties except Peru, and jointly with Australia has an FTA with ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations), to which Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam belong. ASEAN members have their own free trade arrangements.
7. The start of negotiations was deferred for a year until the Obama Administration decided it would continue with an initiative launched under the Bush Presidency - a decision that contradicted many of Obama’s pre-election pledges. For an explanation of the US politics in relation to the TPPA see Lori Wallach and Todd Tucker, “US Politics And The TPPA” in Kelsey, “No Ordinary Deal”.
8. According to UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), Japan’s BITs are with Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Hong Kong SAR, Lao, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Russian Federation, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. http://www.unctadxi.org/templates/docsearch.aspx?id=779
9. There are similarities with the template that the European Union has used in its recent negotiations with CARIFORUM (Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States), South Korea, India and presumably Japan.
10. Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), “United States, Japan Conclude Two-Day US-Japan Trade Forum”, http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/japan-korea-apec/japan
11. USTR, “National Trade Estimate Report On Foreign Trade Barriers 2010, Japan”, http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/reports-and-publications/2010
12. Only Peru supports this approach.
13. See Warwick Murray and Edward Challies, “The TPPA, Agribusiness and Rural Livelihoods”, in Kelsey, “No Ordinary Deal”, p.119
14. Kelsey, “Introduction” in Kelsey, “No Ordinary Deal”, pp.23-24
15. Wikileaks disclosed that New Zealand’s lead negotiator talked of the need to “lower expectations” during a discussion with a US official. “US Free Trade Deal Suspect”, 20/12/10, http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/4473939/US-free-trade-deal-suspect
16. “Key sets Japan straight on free trade rationale”, NZ Herald, 12 /11/10,
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10687047
17. Hon Tim Groser, “Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement”, speech to NZ-US Partnership Forum, 21/2/11, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1102/S00315/speech-groser-trans-pacific-partnership-agreement.htm
18. “Japan, Australia end FTA talks with little progress on farm trade”, Mainichi Daily News, 10/2/11.
19. The advisory committee system, established by the US Congress in 1974, consists of 28 advisory committees, with a total membership of approximately 700 citizen advisors, almost all from the private sector, http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/intergovernmental-affairs/advisory-committees.
20. http://www.uscib.org/docs/2011_02_03_tpp_letter.pdf
21. http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/2009/131118.htm#b
22. http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/2009/131098.htm
23. http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/wto.info/2010/twninfo100901/ArticleOnAcademicStatementOnInvestmentTreaties.doc
24. Harvey Purse and Sanya Reid-Smith, “Some Impacts Of A TPPA Investment Chapter”, AFTINET/Third World Network, February 2011, http://web.me.com/jane_kelsey/Jane/TPPA.html
25. For a comprehensive analysis of the minimum standards obligation that disputes its status as customary international law see Matthew Porterfield, “State Practice And Te (Purported) Obligation Under Customary Law T Provide Compensation Fr Regulatory Expropriations”, forthcoming
26. http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/japan-korea-apec/japan/regulatory-reform-and-competition-policy-initiative
27. See, for example, civil society open letters from Australia and New Zealand in December 2010, letters to the governments of all TPPA countries from the peak union bodies in Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Peru and the United States in February 2011. See http://web.me.com/jane_kelsey/Jane/TPPA.html
28. United Nations, “Report Of The Commission Of Experts Of The President of the UN General Assembly On Reforms Of The International Monetary And Financial System”, 21/9/09, pp. 103-4
29. Letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary to the Treasury Tim Geithner and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk from Ricardo Hausmann, Dani Rodrik, Joseph Stiglitz, Arvind Subramaniam and 246 others, 31/1/11; Letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others from John Endean, President, American Business Conference and 17 others, 7/2/11; Gallagher, Kevin and Anderson, Sarah, “Corporate Lobby Groups Issue Weak Attack on Economists Who Support Capital Control Flexibility”, Institute of Policy Studies/Global Development and Environmental Institution at Tufts University, 10/2/11
30. Third World Network/Public Citizen, “Analysis Of The Leaked New Zealand Paper on the Trans-Pacific Partnership And Intellectual Property Negotiations”, 3/12/10, http://web.me.com/jane_kelsey/Jane/TPPA.html
31. Office of the USTR, “USTR, USDA Statement On Conclusion Of Technical Working-Level Meeting between United States, Japan Regarding US Beef, Beef Products”, http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/japan-korea-apec/japan
32. Hon Murray McCully, “The Road Ahead: Shaping the Next Decade Of US/NZ Cooperation”, speech to the US-NZ Partnership Forum, 21/2/11
33. Ernest Bower and Brian Lynch, “Pacific Partners: The Future Of US-NZ Relations”, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington and New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, February 2011, p.18
34. Bower and Lynch, p.16
35. The name seems ill-fated; the US initiative for a Free Trade Area of the Americas collapsed in the face of popular and government resistance to US neo-imperialism.
36. Open letters to the governments of Australia, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand and the US were presented to the negotiators at the Santiago round of negotiations, see http://web.me.com/jane_kelsey/Jane/TPPA.html