12 countries reached the TPP agreement
The "Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement" (TPP) was originally initiated in 2005 by Chile, Singapore, New Zealand, and Brunei. The characteristic is the mutual elimination of tariffs. Due to the small economic size of the initial participants, this agreement initially received little attention. In 2008, the United States announced its participation and proposed to create a high-standard and broader regional cooperation agreement. Since then, the interest has gradually increased. Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Japan and other countries successively joined in the following years.
There are 12 countries that have reached the TPP agreement this time: the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Their economic scale accounts for 40% of the global economic aggregate.
The TPP Agreement contains a large number of legal provisions, including 30 chapters on investment, services, e-commerce, government procurement, intellectual property, labor, environment, etc., including market access for agricultural products, rules of origin for the automobile industry, pharmaceutical industry Intellectual property protection has been the main focus of previous rounds of negotiations. After fierce competition, the parties finally reached a compromise and successfully concluded the TPP negotiations. According to the agreement, tariffs on approximately 18,000 commodities between relevant countries will be gradually reduced or completely eliminated in the coming period.
The TPP Agreement may create new imbalances and uncertainties
Compared with some existing multilateral free trade arrangements, the TPP negotiations focus on the formulation of standards and rules, and hope Using this as a sample to reshape Asia-Pacific and even global trade rules, the pursuit of “full coverage” and “high standards” are its distinctive features.
However, the TPP agreement may create new imbalances and uncertainties. Among the countries participating in the TPP negotiations, there are both developed countries such as the United States and Canada, as well as developing countries such as Brunei and Vietnam. Many experts pointed out that the TPP requires significantly reducing trade protection, restricting supervision of foreign investors, adopting the so-called equal opportunity principle for government procurement, and setting high standards for financial liberalization, which exceeds the development level of many developing countries. stage, it is also likely to be beyond the scope of what their domestic enterprises can bear.
Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz and Roosevelt Institute economist Adam Hersh also recently jointly wrote an article pointing out that many large business lobby groups were involved in the negotiation process of the TPP agreement. Judging from the monopoly rights of patented medicines, the investor-host country dispute settlement mechanism, etc., the US-led TPP agreement actually has nothing to do with "free" trade, but more about "artificially operated" trade - by the main beneficiaries. Pick profitable companies and industries.
TPP will have an impact on China’s foreign trade in the short term
After the TPP negotiations, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce of China stated that this agreement is one of the important free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region. . China is open to the establishment of institutions that are in line with World Trade Organization rules and help promote economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. We hope that the agreement and other free trade arrangements in the region will promote each other and promote trade, investment and economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. Make a contribution.
At present, China has not joined the agreement, but it cannot be ruled out that China may propose to join at an appropriate time in the future. In the short term, the agreement may have some impact on China's foreign trade, but in the long term, under the background of economic globalization, no multilateral trade arrangement can exclude non-agreement countries and regions from international trade. outside the system, otherwise its own development will be greatly restricted.
In recent years, with the signing of China-Switzerland, China-South Korea, and China-Australia free trade agreements, negotiations on China-US and China-EU investment agreements have accelerated, pilot projects such as the Shanghai Free Trade Zone have continued to develop, and the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership" "With the steady progress of negotiations and the construction of the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area, as well as the continuous advancement of the "Belt and Road" construction, China has shown a deep, high-level, and all-round opening to foreign trade. Many experts pointed out that the expected impact of the TPP agreement on China is limited.
From the perspective of the evolution of world trade, the global trade pattern is always dynamic and has its own rules to follow.
Today, bilateral and regional free trade arrangements are developing rapidly and have become an important driver of the in-depth development of economic globalization. China will continue to be committed to reaching high-level bilateral and regional free trade arrangements, constantly improving new open economic mechanisms, and injecting sustained impetus into industrial upgrading, structural adjustment and innovative development.