Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement got a big boost around the APEC meeting in Honolulu. A broad framework was announced, progress highlighted, and a 12 month deadline for a deal was set.
The TPP is the first trade agreement which President Obama did not inherit from his predecessors, and it is seen as a means of keeping the US engaged in Asia. Read more…
Author: Deborah Elms, RSIS
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiro Noda has finally announced that his country will seek to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.
His government was poised to enter the talks earlier in the year, but the decision was postponed in the wake of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster — and even Noda’s announcement this week was delayed multiple times as he tried to shore up support within his own party. Read more…
Author: Corey Wallace, University of Auckland
Public debate surrounding Japan’s proposed entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) remains as heated and confused as ever.
The rhetoric is far-ranging: while some maintain that Japan risks being permanently left behind economically should it fail to negotiate entry into the TPP, others suggest that Japan’s government is agreeing to effectively cede sovereignty and sacrifice its agricultural sector for the sake of diplomatic cordiality. No one really knows what the TPP will mean for Japan, but little recognition is given to this fact. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW Canberra
The Japanese government’s new policy reform plan, Basic Policy and Action Plan for the Revitalisation of Our Country’s Food and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, (published 25 October) does little to promote agricultural trade liberalisation.
While containing a number of reform proposals designed to expand the scale of farming and facilitate agricultural land transfers, the plan fails to address the most important issue of all: reducing direct income subsidies to small-scale farms. Read more…
Author: Masahiro Kawai, ADBI
According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) study Institutions for Asian Integration: Toward an Asian Economic Community (2010), Asia is supported by a dense web of 40 overlapping regional and sub-regional institutions that promote regional cooperation and integration at the intergovernmental level.
Yet with few formal or explicit commitments from members of these institutions, Asia remains ‘institution-light’. Read more…
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
With no clear leader and few strong incentives for deep integration, Asian cooperation for the foreseeable future is likely to be intergovernmental, with little pooling of sovereignty to create supranational institutions or agree common rules and disciplines.
As Asia’s weight in the world economy grows, however, its interests will also be served by a strong commitment to global institutions. Read more…
Author: Luke Nottage, University of Sydney
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was one of the first among world leaders to visit Japan, over 20–23 April, after the nation was stricken on 3 March by the ‘earthquake-tsunami-radiation triple disaster’.
But the Australian government was tactful and realistic in not placing emphasis on progressing bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations at that time. Read more…
Author: Aurelia G Mulgan, UNSW Canberra
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) issue is clarifying the lines of division between Japanese industrial and agricultural interests in a way not seen before.
The Great Eastern Earthquake is serving to solidify these lines even further because both sides are using the disaster to argue for and against trade liberalisation respectively. Read more…
Author: Claude Barfield, AEI
After Congress passes FTAs with Korea, Columbia and Panama, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) will become the single most important US trade initiative, serving as a building block for a larger Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific Agreement (FTAAP).
TPP negotiators aim for a comprehensive 21st century FTA. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Given that Prime Minister Kan has survived the vote of no confidence in his government on Thursday, he may be in a position to make good on the commitment he made at the recent G8 summit to decide Japan’s possible participation in the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) at an early date.
The subject came up in the conversation between Prime Minister Kan and President Obama. Read more…
Author: Philippa Dee, ANU and Shiro Armstrong, ANU, Columbia University
The Doha Development Round of World Trade Organisation trade negotiations is in deep trouble and could become the first Round to fail.
What will happen if Doha fails? Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
So what’s the problem? Does it matter if the WTO’s Doha Round is prematurely pronounced dead?
For Asia and the Pacific, it matters, seriously. Read more…
Author: Ann Capling, University of Melbourne
Ten years after its launch, the Doha Round is now on the brink of failure. At a key meeting in Geneva last Friday, members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed that the negotiations could no longer continue in their current form.
WTO Director General Pascal Lamy will now undertake consultations at the ministerial level and report back to WTO membership at the end of May about the next steps. Read more…
Author: Kyla Tienhaara, Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University
The last decade has seen an explosive increase in disputes between foreign investors and governments that have been resolved in international arbitration.
Many of these disputes have revolved around public policy measures and have concerned sensitive issues such as access to drinking water, mining development on indigenous sacred sites, health warnings on cigarette packages, and restrictions on the use of dangerous chemicals. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
The idea of a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, at least among the nine Asia Pacific countries that are currently signed up for the negotiations, has been hyped up over the last year as the Obama administration declared it to be the way forward on a new American engagement with Asia.
The TPP initiative — which includes Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and the United States — now tops Washington’s trade agenda barring the unfinished business of FTAs with Korea, Colombia and Panama. Read more…