A Glimpse of a Canadian-Led International Order

MATT PETERSON at the Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/new-tpp/551405/

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The revised TPP—now renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—includes almost none of those controversial provisions on intellectual property. “The removal of a number of provisions from the CPTPP that are harmful to people’s access to medicines is a major victory,” concluded Doctors Without Borders.

What changed? “Canada took the lead on seeking amendments to the TPP’s deeply problematic intellectual property chapter,” wrote Michael Geist, a Canadian law professor. “The IP chapter largely reflected U.S. demands and with its exit from the TPP, an overhaul that more closely aligns the agreement to international standards was needed.” These issues were included in the deal because major American companies—not just pharma but also the software and entertainment industries—rely on strict intellectual property rules to make money, and their interests set the terms for the American negotiating team. Without America making those demands in exchange for access to its markets, it no longer made economic sense for other countries to accept them, said Malcolm.


“What may be most remarkable—given the U.S.’s absence from the table—is how much of the original deal struck in October 2015 has stuck,” wrote Financial Times trade editor Shawn Donnan. A controversial arrangement whereby companies can sue countries over their domestic laws, known as the investor-state dispute settlement system, remains in a reduced fashion. Labor and environmental protections are largely unchanged. The EFF’s Malcolm pointed to e-commerce provisions that provide only weak privacy protections, among other issues, as still being problematic. But overall, the new deal is so similar to the original that Canadian labor unions are furious that their government is still advancing it, just as labor groups in the U.S. objected under Obama. The non-American architects of global trade, in other words, will come to pretty similar agreements even without the U.S.

The biggest change is that the deal is much smaller. Without the U.S., it covers 14 percent of the global economy, down from 40. That means China will have less incentive to join in, as the deal’s architects had hoped. But membership is open to other countries—South Korea and Indonesia are near-term possibilities, and the U.K. has said it wants in, post-Brexit—which could still sway China’s calculus.

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