TPP Essay

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) involves 12 countries: the United States (US), Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Japan. The TPP stems from an existing agreement between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore (Lewis). If the agreement is ratified, it would be the largest regional trade accord in history, since these countries account for roughly 40% of the global economy (Granville). According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the TPP is designed to promote economic growth, raise living standards, enhance innovation, support job growth, and enhance protections for labor and the environment. Moreover, the main components of the TPP are a comprehensive market access by eliminating or reducing tariff and nontariff barriers for trading goods and services; a regional approach to commitments; addressing new trade challenges by promoting innovation, productivity, and competitiveness; inclusive trade to ensure that economies at all levels of development and business can benefit; and a platform for regional integration …show more content…
The TPP would not allow data localization requirements, protect source codes, strengthen intellectual property rights, ensure transfer of data across borders and simply making it more difficult for states to close data servers and engage in cyber-attacks (Still). This is an important feature of the TPP for the US, since they have successfully commercialized the internet and have become a state of technological innovation and opportunity. The TPP would help the US combat other states protectionist policies that could prevent them from serving international customers by holding states accountable for these policies. It would require those states to allow the transfer of information, electronically, for the purpose of business. No other trade agreement has had this requirement