What the TPP means for Latin America and the Caribbean (Antoni Estevadeordal, Brookings)

On February 4, 2016, after five years of negotiations, the members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) signed the trade pact, considered to be the highest standard trade agreement to date.[1] The TPP includes not only traditional measures such as the reduction or elimination of tariffs, but also provisions on contemporary topics like trade facilitation, support for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), telecommunications, trade in innovative services (including digital technologies), issues of regulatory coherence and competitiveness, as well as higher standards on labor and environmental rights, sanitary and phytosanitary standards, and on the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR). In addition to the high standards of the agreement, the TPP is remarkable in its membership; together, the member countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, the United States, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam) account for 40 percent of global GDP, 26 percent of international trade, and 10 percent of the global population. If ratified, the TPP will be most significant achievement in global trade since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/03/09-tpp-latin-america-caribbean-estevadeordal