The TPP has risen from modest origins as an FTA among Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore to become the centerpiece of US trade strategy in the Asia-Pacific. It is breathtaking in its ambition to be a “truly 21st century trade agreement” that covers virtually every factor affecting cross-border trade in goods and services as well as investment among its (current) twelve members. Its twenty-nine chapters seek to reduce barriers, facilitate trade, reinforce regional supply chains, and impose state-of-the-art enforcement mechanisms. If ambitions are met, it will not only reduce barriers to trade and investment, but also deeply penetrate participants’ economic and regulatory structures. In this opening article for Topics of the Month, I narrow the focus to the United States and Japan, which are TPP’s biggest economies and whose cooperation is most essential to success, laying out their interests and their differing levels of urgency. I welcome rejoinders in the next few months that take a different perspective from the one I present.

Read full article at www.theasanforum.org.