Bulletin: What we know and don't know about the TPPA

At a meeting of world leaders in China earlier this week, Prime Minister John Key floated the idea of setting up a free trade area for Asia and the Pacific. The deal would cover an area that has about 3 billion people and 40 percent of the world’s trade.

It’s an ambitious goal, and not least because the Government has been working to secure a similar agreement for five years – the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and as opposition to it increases momentum, it seems no closer to being finalised.

Key expects to have a deal finalised by August next year, noting that if it doesn’t happen by then, “you’d never say never but it becomes a lot more difficult”.

The aim of the TPPA is to open up trade between 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region: New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade says the agreement will “deepen economic ties” between member countries, encouraging the trade of goods and services, boosting investment flows, and linking across economic policy and regulatory issues. So far, so typical of a trade agreement. 

Half of our top ten trading partners are part of the negotiations, and business, unsurprisingly is getting behind the deal. A group led by ANZCO meat exporters chairman Sir Geaeme Harrison, is planning to launch a fund for a pro-TPP campaign once the deal is finalised and made public. Sir Graeme told the New Zealand Herald he is “concerned that the public did not understand the benefits of TPP or the free trade agreement New Zealand had with China”.

But opponents point out that if the deal is only made public once it has been signed, it can’t be stopped if people disagree.

And there are questions over what the Government is prepared to give up in order to secure the agreement – and given that the substantive content of the document is not available to the public or the media, we may not know the full extent of the compromises we could be making.

Thousands protested the TPPA across the country on Saturday, arguing that the agreement, if finalised, will have a “huge effect on the lives of ordinary Kiwis”. (Protests were also held at the end of last year and in March.) They’re concerned that the TPPA will leave New Zealand vulnerable to pressure from overseas corporations and banks; that it will make medicine more expensive; and that copyright legislation will be more stringently enforced.

But the controversy is not just over the terms of the agreement, but the lack of transparency with which the negotiations have been carried out. Protesters point to the secrecy surrounding five years of talks as suspicious – if it weren’t for a leaked document, we might not even know any details at all – and say the lack of consultation with the public on an issue that will affect them is undemocratic.

It’s Our Future, the group leading the opposition to the TPPA, questions whether the government is acting in New Zealand’s best interest. “If they really believe that, they should bring the negotiations into the open, and provide evidence of concrete benefits to outweigh these serious costs. This is what democracy requires.”

Prime Minister John Key has been dismissive of these complaints, saying the public is typically shut out of negotiations on such an international level. But Jane Kelsey, a law professor at the University of Auckland and an outspoken critic of the TPPA, says such secrecy is not the norm - and Labour has called on the government to release the full text of the TPP at least two weeks before it is signed.

Plus commentators have pointed out that the changes it proposes to laws surrounding labour, copyright and intellectual property matters that are usually left to individual countries’ governments to legislate, mean the TPPA is not a normal trade agreement. The United States in particular is understood to be making demands about copyright and patent protection that member countries will have to agree to before it comes to the party.

                READ: Megan Whelan explored the implications of the TPPA for how we consume media in New Zealand at the end of last year.

Prime Minister John Key has said that there is potential for some countries to carve out certain areas from the agreement to ensure a deal is done, but has not specified which areas or which countries - only that “none of them are of such significance that I can see that New Zealanders would … be overly bothered”.

The recent protests, and apparently mounting opposition to the TPPA, suggest otherwise - but there’s still a chance that five years of talks might still not amount to anything. At this time in 2013, Trade Minister Tim Groser was optimistic that negotiations would have concluded by August this year. He now says the “finish line is in sight”. And he told TVNZ’s Q and A that officials have been working around the clock, and it’s more likely to happen than not. 

As Radio New Zealand’s economics correspondent Patrick O’Meara says “After five years of talks, one shouldn’t hold one’s breath”. But for another six months at least, we can expect to hear more about the TPPA - if not in the form of more details of the agreement, at least in protest.