TPP

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP or TPP for short) is a trade and investment agreement that was signed on 7 March 2018 between 11 Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The pact went into force on 30 December 2018 among the members who have ratified it. The US withdrew from it in January 2017.

The investment chapter includes investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions. Civil society groups have blasted the mechanism, as it gives a foreign investor or company disproportionate powers vis-à-vis governments or domestic companies. Foreign investors can resort to a parallel system of justice specifically made for them to challenge public health, the environment and other public-interest ‘safeguards’, and bypass national justice courts.

Photo: Blink O’Fanaye / CC BY-NC 2.0

(March 2020)

Yes | 6-Jan-2016
The TPP makes the rights of companies sacrosanct, and that includes the right to mine. But what about the rights of people who live in the way of proposed mining sites?
Rebelión | 23-Dec-2015
El Acuerdo Transpacífico, negociado de forma ultrasecreta, blindará a los grandes inversionistas extranjeros y a los monopolios de la salud en Perú.
RT | 23-Dec-2015
El TPP da a más de 9.000 empresas extranjeras el derecho de violar leyes que protegen el medioambiente y evitar los tribunales.
Aliran | 22-Dec-2015
Claims of the much-touted supposed ‘benefits’ of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism are not really what they seem.
Now | 11-Dec-2015
Mining sins in poor countries are likely to get worse under Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The Malaysian Insider | 4-Dec-2015
Four lawmakers today wrote a letter to the Attorney-General seeking clarification whether the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism under the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is in line with the spirit of the Federal Constitution.
BEUC | 3-Dec-2015
Although TPP seems a remote issue, it could have a direct impact on EU consumers.
Gateway House | 27-Nov-2015
For India, the U.S.-driven Trans Pacific Partnership will skew investment and intellectual property rights, and especially the debate over the Investor State Dispute System which allows companies to challenge soverign rights and public policy.
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies | 25-Nov-2015
The TPP investment chapter offers few truly novel features and is instead heavily influenced by prior American treaty practice.
CIEL | 19-Nov-2015
Like TPP, U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) formed in the past two decades have similarly promised meaningful and enforceable labor and environmental safeguards.