Study On The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is originated from the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (P4Agreement) among four small countries in the Asia-Pacific region. P4was of rather high level trade liberalization. When the United States joined in the TPP, it set off rounds of renegotiations to create a brand new free trade agreement. This paper studies the history of the TPP and its negotiation progresses, the role of this regional trade mechanism in the international trading system, its related rules on intellectual property rights, and jurisprudence of the TPP mechanism.There are "Introduction", the main parts of4chapters and "Conclusion" in the paper.First comes "Introduction" of literature review, methods conducted in the research and the purposes.Chapter I tells the history of the development of the TPP Agreement. The protype of the TPP is a high level free trade agreements concluded by Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, Vietnam in the Asia-Pacific region, covering goods, services, investment, finance, intellectual property rights protection, labor and environmental protection and other fields. The TPP is open for accession. So far there are12members including the United States. They had undertaken16rounds of negotiations, yet could not reach an agreement due to conflicts of member interests. The United States aimed at implementing its Asian strategy through the TPP—to compete for the Asia-Pacific export market, take leadership role in the Asia-Pacific integration, and contain China for political considerations.Chapter2analyzes the role of the TPP agreement in the international trading system. The TPP in its nature will be a legally binding trade agreement. With its open structure for accession, the TPP might continually expand furthur more and update the rules. The TPP is in line with the WTO provisions on regional trade arrangements. It is a potential competitive alternative to other Asia-Pacific regional arrangements. The TPP relys on the WTO dispute settlement mechanism while it may pose a challenge to the WTO rules. TPP members have been participating in various trade agreements leading to a "spaghetti bowl" phenomenon. Yet the TPP agreement does not resolve the conflicts with an integration program. From the New Regionalism's perspective, the TPP is classified as a trans-regional trade agreement of geo-political and geo-economic nature. There is imbalance in the level of economic power beween the United States and other members, thus making the U.S. dominate the progress of rule-making.Chapter3is on rules of intellectual property rights chapter with a comparative analysis of the TPP drafts. In the U.S. recommended draft, proposed protection standards of intellectual property rights go far beyond the TRIPS standards, increasing the items and contents of the subject matter of protection, extending the terms of protection, strengthening law enforcement, expanding usage of criminal penalties, imposing greater duties on the member states, limiting the reasonable use by public. The United States' draft drew opposition from New Zealand and reproaches from other members, most of who insist on the stand of keeping within the range of theTRIPS protection. In addition, due to the proposed intervention in the national medical reimbursement plan, it aroused public health crisis controversies.Chapter4analyzes the logic of the rules controversy raised by the TPP mechanism. The proposed rules on intellectual property rights protection in the TPP go even above levels of the counterparts set in the heatedly debated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and other regional trade agreements, and are not actually consistent with the U.S. domestic regulations. It is out of pragmatic strategy to have trade and intellectual property linked together. The linkage mechanism is a violation of the inherent logic of the legal systems. The history of the pursuit of a high level protection of intellectual property rights in various international forums is explored. With exchange of intellectual property rules-making power as a bargaining chip to trade interests, such a mechanism undermines the sovereign regulation right on public policy, bringing potential conflicts between protection of intellectual property rights and safeguarding human rights. This mechanism is rooted in the pursuit of maximizing individual interests from the global proliferation of neoliberalism, leading to over-protection of the private interests. Strong intellectual property protection is becoming a favor of states in constructing international institutions.The conclusion summarizes the nature and characteristics of the TPP, the relationship between the TPP and other Asia-Pacific Economic integration arrangements and multilateral trading system of the WTO, the characteristics and defects of the TPP Agreement on rules of intellectual property rights, the logic of the TPP mechanisms, and the implications for China.