Should-Read: Zachary Torrey: TPP 2.0: The Deal Without the US

Should-Read: I could not enthusiastically support—I could barely support—the old TPP: it charged poor countries too much through the nose to use U.S.-located intellectual property, for little if not negative benefit to the median U.S. citizen and for substantial harm to world economic growth. This new CPTPP is significantly better, and I can enthusiastically endorse the U.S.’s joining it on its present terms: Zachary Torrey: TPP 2.0: The Deal Without the US: “What’s new about the CPTPP and what do the changes mean?…

…The new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is still a powerful pact in its own right… includes all the original members of the TPP except the United States: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The total combined gross domestic product of the CPTPP would be $13.5 trillion or 13.4 percent of global GDP… one of the biggest trade agreements in the world…. When Trump withdrew from the TPP he also withdrew two of the most controversial provisions for which the United States had been advocating. One of the most ridiculed provisions in the TPP, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision, has been scaled back while a government’s right to regulate its markets has been afforded increased protections. This was only possible after the United States withdrew…. Another key provision the United States pushed for that has fallen to the side is the extension of copyright, or intellectual property, protections. Washington had negotiated for copyright to exist for the author’s lifetime plus an additional 70 years…. The removal of these two provisions highlights what happens when the United States is not involved in regional affairs: the region moves on without it….

Washington could rejoin the agreement…. Far from being dead, the CPTPP perhaps signals a new chapter in global trade, one without the United States…