The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a big deal in the making. With the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations at an impasse, the TPP negotiations have taken center stage as the most significant trade initiative of the 21st century. As of December 2012, negotiators have made extensive progress in 15 negotiating rounds since the talks began in March 2010, though hard work remains to finish the deal in the coming year or so. Despite this effort, however, the TPP is not well understood. In part, the reason lies in the dynamism of the TPP initiative. Unlike other free trade pacts, the growing membership as the talks have proceeded and the broad range, complexity, and novelty of the issues on the agenda have made it difficult to track the substantive detail and progress of the talks. This Policy Analysis aims to remedy this problem by providing a reader's guide to the TPP initiative. It first assesses how much the TPP countries are alike and like-minded in their pursuit of a comprehensive trade deal. It then examines the current status of the talks, the major substantive sticking points, and the implications of Canada and Mexico joining the talks as well as prospective membership of other countries. The Policy Analysis then looks ahead to how the TPP could advance economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region and the implications for trade relations with China.

This volume provides comprehensive chapter-by-chapter assessment of one of the world's most important regional trade agreements, the TPP/CPTPP.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 12 Pacific Rim countries has generated the most intensive political debate about the role of trade in the United States in a generation. The TPP is one of the broadest and most progressive free trade agreements since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The essays in this Policy Analysis provide estimates of the TPP's benefits and costs and analyze more than 20 issues in the agreement, including environmental and labor standards, tariff schedules, investment and competition policy, intellectual property, ecommerce, services and financial services, government procurement, dispute settlement, and agriculture. Through extensive analysis of the TPP text, PIIE scholars present an indispensable and detailed "reader's guide" that also sheds light on the agreement's merits and shortcomings. In Rich People Poor Countries, Caroline Freund identifies and analyzes nearly 700 emerging-market billionaires whose net worth adds up to more than $2 trillion. Freund finds that these titans of industry are propelling poor countries out of their small-scale production and agricultural past and into a future of multinational industry and service-based mega firms. And more often than not, the new billionaires are using their newfound acumen to navigate the globalized economy, without necessarily relying on political connections, inheritance, or privileged access to resources. This story of emerging-market billionaires and the global businesses they create dramatically illuminates the process of industrialization in the modern world economy.

"The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a free trade agreement involving major countries across the Asia Pacific region. The trade pact, which entered into force on 30 December 2018, is considered by many to be the “gold standard”, given its ambitious scope and depth. This volume offers multi-dimensional insights into the CPTPP and its impact on Southeast Asia. It begins with broad analyses covering the historical, economic and geopolitical aspects of the CPTPP. Subsequent chapters focus on the nature and implications of three key path-breaking provisions in the trade agreement, namely investor-state dispute settlement, intellectual property rights and state-owned enterprises. The effect of the CPTPP on Southeast Asia in terms of regional production networks is also examined from the perspective of Japanese multinational enterprises. The potential economic impact of the agreement is analysed for member countries (Vietnam and Malaysia) as well as countries that aspire to join the CPTPP in the future (Indonesia and Thailand). The world trading system is in disarray: the World Trade Organization has been weakened, perhaps terminally; the world’s two economic superpowers are locked in deep, politicized disputes; the forces of populism and nationalism are everywhere complicating the return to a more liberal, rules-based order. These trends are challenging one of the building blocks of ASEAN economic development, namely these countries’ outward-looking trade and investment policies. With impeccable timing this important volume by a group of eminent authors assesses these issues with reference to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The CPTPP excludes the three largest traders—China, the EU and the US—but it is a welcome second-best initiative that may have broader, positive ripple effects. This is the volume to read to gain a deeper understanding of the many complex issues at play." -- Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt Professor Emeritus of Southeast Asian Economies, College of Asia & the Pacific, Australian National University

This report, published by the OECD's International Futures Programme in co-operation with the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre in Australia, aims to stimulate informed debate about the main integration issues facing the Asia-Pacific region in the ...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed regional free trade agreement (FTA) being negotiated among the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. U.S. negotiators and others describe and envision the TPP as a "comprehensive and high-standard" FTA that aims to liberalize trade in nearly all goods and services and include rules-based commitments beyond those currently established in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The broad outline of an agreement was announced on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministerial in November 2011, in Honolulu, HI. If concluded as envisioned, the TPP potentially could eliminate tariff and nontariff barriers to trade and investment among the parties and could serve as a template for a future trade pact among APEC members and potentially other countries. Congress has a direct interest in the negotiations, both through influencing U.S. negotiating positions with the executive branch, and by considering legislation to implement any resulting agreement.

*Updated edition with a new foreword on the Trump administration's trade policy* The vast benefits promised by the supporters of globalization, and by their own government, have never materialized for many Americans. In Failure to Adjust Edward Alden provides a compelling history of the last four decades of US economic and trade policies that have left too many Americans unable to adapt to or compete in the current global marketplace. He tells the story of what went wrong and how to correct the course. Originally published on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Alden’s book captured the zeitgeist that would propel Donald J. Trump to the presidency. In a new introduction to the paperback edition, Alden addresses the economic challenges now facing the Trump administration, and warns that economic disruption will continue to be among the most pressing issues facing the United States. If the failure to adjust continues, Alden predicts, the political disruptions of the future will be larger still.

The terrain of the world trading system is shifting as countries in Asia, Europe, and North America negotiate new trade agreements. However, none of these talks include both China and the United States, the two biggest economies in the world. In this pathbreaking study, C. Fred Bergsten, Gary Clyde Hufbauer, and Sean Miner argue that China and the United States would benefit substantially from a bilateral free trade and investment accord. In the process, they contend, each country would also achieve progress in addressing its internal economic challenges, such as the low saving rate in the United States. Achieving greater trade and investment integration could be accomplished with one comprehensive effort or through step-by-step negotiations over key issues. The authors call on the United States to seek liberalization of China's services sector as vital to securing an agreement, and they explain that such contentious matters as cyber espionage and currency manipulation be handled through parallel negotiations rather than in the agreement itself. This is an important study of the benefits and difficulties of a complex matter that could yield dividends to the two economies and help stabilize the security and well-being of the rest of the world.

Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump's sweeping proposals on international trade, if implemented, could unleash a trade war that would plunge the US economy into recession and cost more than 4 million private sector American jobs, according to an empirical analysis of the two candidates' trade agendas by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, has expressed skepticism about trade but does not advocate a change in the status quo. Marcus Noland, Tyler Moran, and Sherman Robinson employ a macroeconomic model to show that if Trump raises tariffs sharply on China, Mexico, and other trading partners, export-dependent US industries in the information technology, aerospace, and engineering sectors would be the most severely affected. But the shock resulting from Trump's proposed trade sanctions would also damage sectors not engaged directly in trade. In a separate legal analysis, Gary Clyde Hufbauer argues that there is ample precedent and scope for a US president to unilaterally raise tariffs as Trump has vowed to do as a centerpiece of his trade policy.