The Trans-Pacific Partnership (the “TPP”) agreement, a multination trade agreement, was finalized on October 5, 2015 after five years of negotiations. The finalization of the accords is a win for the U.S. in its attempt to directly compete with China in Asian markets. However, the Obama Administration, who has been pushing for this agreement since 2011, still needs congressional approval for the accords to be ratified domestically.
The TPP is specifically between the U.S., Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei Darussalam. Along with its principal focus of lowering trade barriers such as tariffs, the TPP will also establish a common framework for intellectual property, enforcement standards for labor law and environmental law, and an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.