The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement is a proposed trade pact that Japan is currently negotiating with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam (as of September 2013).  The TPP aims to increase the liberalization of economies in the Pacific region through abolition of tariffs on trade as well as reregulation.¹  In 2008, the United States joined the talks “and has espoused a hard core complete free trade policy,” which has vastly expanded the scope of the negotiations.²  With both the US and Japan as participants, the pact would cover nearly 40% of the world’s economy.³  Japan officially joined one of final rounds of the negotiations in July 2013 in Malaysia, as the participating countries intend to finalize the TPP negotiations (at least partially) by the end of 2013.⁴

The TPP agreement affects not only trade issues, but also nontrade matters that immensely impact lives of citizens in all participating countries.⁵  The areas at stake include, for example:

• domestic court decisions and international legal standards (e.g., overriding domestic laws on both trade and nontrade matters, foreign investors’ right to sue governments in international tribunals that would overrule the national sovereignty)
• environmental regulations (e.g., nuclear energy, pollution, sustainability)
• financial deregulation  (e.g., more power and privileges to the bankers and financiers)
• food safety (e.g., lowering food self-sufficiency, prohibition of mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease)
• Government procurement (e.g., no more buy locally produced/grown)
• Internet freedom (e.g., monitoring and policing user activity)
• labor (e.g., welfare regulation, workplace safety, relocating domestic jobs abroad)
• patent protection, copyrights (e.g., decrease access to affordable medicine)
• public access to essential services may be restricted due to investment rules (e.g., water, electricity, and gas)

For a brief explanation, see the video made by workers across the Pacific Rim (on right).

Although the TPP negotiations have been held in the name of the people, the draft texts have been shrouded in secrecy not only from the public, but also members of the Diet, and civil society, thereby precluding public scrutiny and public input.  Reportedly, the countries have signed up not to reveal the contents of the agreement for four years after the signing of the agreement. ⁶  All public information comes from leaked texts.  Bizarrely, the TPP makes a special exception to “a group of some 600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses.”⁷

The TPP is a Trojan horse, branded as a “free trade” agreement, but having nothing to do with fair and equitable treatment.  In reality, it is precisely “a wish list of the 1% ―a worldwide corporate power.”⁸  “Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas.”⁹  “The other chapters enshrine new rights and privileges for major corporations while weakening the power of nation states to oppose them.”¹⁰  As the Japanese people have increasingly become concerned about its potential implications on their lives, some groups have voiced their objections to the TPP.

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