Trans Pacific Partnership

How to Join the CPTPP

How to Join the CPTPP

Assuming the current members have no objection, the applicant country can proceed to file a formal request to join. This letter, as the UK has demonstrated, gets sent to New Zealand, as Wellington serves as the official repository location for the CPTPP. In the absence of a Secretariat, the CPTPP is managed through a rotating appointment of Commission Chairs. Japan is currently holding the post. (Mexico held it last year and Singapore is up for 2022. Both are serving as vice chairs of the Commission for 2021 to support Japan. The rotation is dictated by the order in which members joined the agreement.) A CPTPP Secretariat would make accession talks significantly easier. It would come with a built-in group of officials well versed in CPTPP rules and regulations, familiar with the existing membership and important sensitivities, as well as the current individuals for each member that are actively involved in various chapter activities. Secretariat staff could serve as neutral parties, shepherding new members through accession. Without a Secretariat, CPTPP accession will be started by the current chair. The chair will help members decide on the composition of a “working group” to manage the process. It may be that all aspiring members are grouped together into one working group or that members opt to hold separate working groups for each potential member. The chair of the working group(s) will be decided by members and the group(s) will include representatives from all active members. Accession to the CPTPP is not like launching FTA negotiations. The process is closer to that of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). It will likely take some time to organize, as there is no sitting working group for members. New members are not negotiating over changes to existing rules. The nearly 600 pages of text need not be adjusted in accession. Instead, work will get underway on crafting new member’s specific schedules which include:

Pop Open the Sparkling Wine: Round 2 for TPP

Negotiations started in March 2010.  The original deal was finished in January 2016 with 12 parties.  When the United States withdrew a year later, many people expected the agreement to die a quiet death. However, officials persevered and fought hard to maintain the high quality of the trading arrangements.  For many, this meant accepting tough provisions originally negotiated as part of a comprehensive package with 12 members. The consequences of the final agreement are important for companies.  Our brand-new booklet on 10 Benefits of the CPTPP can be downloaded here.  The final agreement signed in Chile pared back the commitments by suspending 19 elements, amending one provision, and clarifying the terms for two others.  (For more specific details, see our revised Policy Brief 17-11a.)

TPP11 and RCEP Compared: A Side-by-Side Update

November 2017:  This is an updated version of an earlier post on Talking Trade, modified to reflect the TPP11 changes and the expansion of the agenda in RCEP.  However, because RCEP, especially, remains under negotiation, the assessment should be viewed with some caution.  For further discussion on how you can use or influence these agreements, please see us soon at the Asian Trade Centre.

TPP11: Unpacking the Suspended Provisions

The primary difference between the original 12 party Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the new 11 party version is a set of “suspended” provisions.  This is a list of 20 items that officials from the member countries have agreed to remove temporarily from the free trade agreement texts. These suspended provisions (found in Annex 2 of the CPTPP) are meant to be reinstated at some future date.  In other words, these elements of the TPP may come back into the agreement as originally negotiated.  Between now and then, member governments are not required to implement these rules at the domestic level. Many commentators with an unclear understanding of the TPP have assumed that these suspended provisions are a significant proportion of the document.  The removal of both the United States and the 20 elements, therefore, has been said to make the TPP11 less relevant. Neither is the case.  The TPP11 (or the CPTPP) is extremely important for companies and continues to set the benchmark for future trade agreements globally. 

In other words, all of the existing annexes from the TPP agreement remain unchanged.  All tariff cuts will take place on schedule as planned.  All services open as intended.  All investment is opened as indicated for TPP11 firms.  All procurement access that was originally scheduled will continue. Furthermore, there are zero changes to the legal texts at all (beyond removing references to the United States) in the original chapters for 1-4 (definitions, market access for goods, rules of origin, textiles), 6-8 (trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary, technical barriers to trade), 12 (temporary movement of business persons), 14 (electronic commerce), 16-17 (competition, state owned enterprises), 19 (labor), 21-25 (cooperation and capacity building, competitiveness and business facilitation, development, SMEs, regulatory coherence), 28 (dispute settlement).

CPTPP Or TPP11 For Trade Nerds

Broken down, the new elements are the inclusion of the suspended bits (discussed more below), the revised entry into force (necessary after the US pulled out), a new section on withdrawal (the necessity of which was made crystal clear after the US pulled out), a new section on accession (since the old one was too vague anyway), a potentially interesting article 6 that seems to review the whole agreement in the future, and article 7 that copies across all of the original commitments and texts from TPP12.  What this means in practice is that the CPTPP or TPP11 has identical schedules and commitments for members to TPP12.  Everyone should start pulling out their TPP12 materials and reviewing documents to refresh memories now.  Firms need to prepare for entry into force which is coming up fast.