A version of the text of the agreement "subject to legal review" was released by prospective member parties on 5 November 2015. A 2016 study by
University of Maryland political scientists Todd Allee and Andrew Lugg finds that out of the 74 previous trade agreements that TPP members signed since 1995, the text of the TPP most resembles that from earlier U.S. trade agreements. A 2017 study found that the TPP scored high relative to other trade agreements in terms of a government's ability to freely legislate and implement regulations in given public policy domains.
Trade barriers The agreement cuts over 18,000 tariffs. Tariffs on all U.S. manufactured goods and almost all U.S. farm products would be eliminated, with most eliminations occurring immediately. According to the
Congressional Research Service, TPP "would be the largest U.S.
FTA by trade flows ($905 billion in U.S. goods and services exports and $980 billion in imports in 2014)". In addition, the agreement mandates expedited customs procedures for express shipments and prohibits customs duties from being applied to electronic transmissions. It also requires additional privacy, security, and consumer protections for online transactions and encourages the publication of online customs forms. These provisions are expected to be particularly beneficial to small businesses. In 2013 when TPP was still being negotiated,
Sierra Club's director of responsible trade, Ilana Solomon, argued that the TPP "could directly threaten our climate and our environment [including] new rights that would be given to corporations, and new constraints on the fossil fuel industry all have a huge impact on our climate, water, and land." Upon the release of a draft of the Environment Chapter in January 2014, the
Natural Resources Defense Council and the
World Wide Fund for Nature joined with the Sierra Club in criticizing the TPP. After the announcement of the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on 25 September 2015 and the finalisation of the TPP a week later, critics discussed the interactions between the SDGs and the TPP. While one critic sees the TPP as providing a mixed bag of benefits and drawbacks to the SDGs, another regards the TPP as being incompatible with the SDGs, highlighting that if the development provisions clash with any other aspect of the TPP, the other aspect takes priority. The
Friends of the Earth have spoken out against the TPP. The
White House has cited supportive statements from the World Wildlife Fund, the
Nature Conservancy, the
Humane Society, the
Wildlife Conservation Society,
Defenders of Wildlife,
International Fund for Animal Welfare,
World Animal Protection and other environmental groups in favor of the TPP. The
Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that the TPP is "the most environmentally friendly trade deal ever negotiated." In regards to ISDS, PIIE analysts note that there is little evidence of constraints on environmental policies resulting from ISDS litigation. The report goes on to say that trade agreements like the TPP set broad-reaching rules for the economy and government policy, thereby expanding trade, often in extractive sectors, and protecting corporations and financial firms from future measures to stabilize the climate.
Human rights According to the
Office of the United States Trade Representative, the TPP prohibits exploitative child labor and forced labor; ensures the right to
collective bargaining; and prohibits employment discrimination. The USTR asserts that "research by the International Labor Organization and the World Trade Organization finds that combining expanded trade opportunities with strong protections for workers can help workers move from informal-sector jobs into formal work in wage-paying, regulated export industries which offer a minimum wage, benefits, and safety programs".
PolitiFact notes that Malaysia began to comply with the TPP in June 2015, amending its law to improve the treatment of trafficking victims. Membership of the TPP had previously encouraged Vietnam to show a good human rights record. Copyright is granted at a length of life of the author plus 70 years, The
Office of the United States Trade Representative stated that the TPP would spur innovation by requiring signatories to establish strong patentability standard and adopt strong copyright protections. Walter Park, Professor of Economics at
American University, argues, based on the existing literature, that the pharmaceutical protections in TPP will potentially enhance unaffiliated licensing in developing countries, lead to tech transfers that contribute to local learning-by-doing, stimulate new drug launches in more countries, expand marketing and distribution networks, and encourage early-stage
pharmaceutical innovations. As of December 2011, some provisions relating to the enforcement of patents and copyrights alleged to be present in the US proposal for the agreement had been criticised as being excessively restrictive, beyond those in the Korea–US trade agreement and
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Both the copyright term expansion and the non-complaint provision (i.e., competent authorities may initiate legal action without the need for a formal complaint) previously failed to pass in Japan because they were so controversial. The
final agreement nonetheless set a term of copyright equal to the one that obtains under U.S. law of life of the author plus 70 years.
Ken Akamatsu, creator of Japanese manga series
Love Hina and
Mahou Sensei Negima!, expressed concern the agreement could decimate the derivative
dōjinshi (self-published) works prevalent in Japan. Akamatsu argued that the TPP "would destroy derivative dōjinshi. And as a result, the power of the entire
manga industry would also diminish."
Pharmaceuticals In May 2015, Nobel Memorial prize winning economist
Paul Krugman expressed concern that the TPP would tighten the patent laws and allow corporations such as big pharmaceutical companies and Hollywood to gain advantages, in terms of increasing rewards, at the cost of consumers, and that people in developing countries would not be able to access the medicines under the TPP regime. However, Walter Park, Professor of Economics at American University, argues that it is far from clear in economic research that this would necessarily happen: clarifying intellectual property rights on drugs, for some developing countries, has not led to greater prices and less access to drugs. In July 2015, an editorial in the
New England Journal of Medicine cited concerns by
Médecins sans Frontières and
Oxfam that a spike in drug prices caused by patent extensions could threaten millions of lives. Extending "data exclusivity" provisions would "prevent drug regulatory agencies such as the
Food and Drug Administration from registering a generic version of a drug for a certain number of years." The article arugues that TPP could theoretically require corporations be paid compensation for any "lost profits" found to result from a nation's health regulations. The Australian Public Health Association (PHAA) published a media release in February 2014 that highlighted "the ways in which some of the expected economic gains from the TPPA may be undermined by poor health outcomes, and the economic costs associated with these poor health outcomes." A number of United States Congressional members, including Senator
Bernie Sanders and Representatives
Sander M. Levin,
John Conyers,
Jim McDermott and the now-retired
Henry Waxman, as well as
John Lewis,
Charles B. Rangel,
Earl Blumenauer,
Lloyd Doggett and then-congressman
Pete Stark, have expressed concerns about access to medicine. By protecting intellectual property in the form of the TPP mandating patent extensions, access by patients to affordable medicine in the developing world could be hindered, particularly in Vietnam.
Investor-state arbitration The TPP agreement establishes an
investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which grants investors the right to sue foreign governments for treaty violations. For example, if an investor invests in country "A", a member of a trade treaty, and country A breaches that treaty, then the investor may sue country A's government for the breach. ISDS is meant to provide investors in foreign countries basic protections from foreign government actions such as "freedom from discrimination", "protection against uncompensated expropriation of property", "protection against denial of justice" and "right to transfer capital": but can grant monetary damages to investors adversely affected by such laws. As pointed out by the
Office of the United States Trade Representative, ISDS requires specific treaty violations, and does not allow corporations to sue solely over "lost profits". The TPP specifically excludes tobacco industries from the ISDS process. The carve-out came as a response to concerns about ISDS cases against anti-smoking laws, including
Philip Morris v. Uruguay. The exemption of tobacco from ISDS is a first for an international trade agreement. In February 2016, Lise Johnson and Lisa Sachs of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment and
Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute allege that foreign corporations can sue a national government in international arbitration over a government's actions if the measures (including those for public health, national security, environment, food and drug, and responses to economic crises) have a negative effect on their profits and economic interests.
Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's
Global Trade Watch raised similar concerns while TPP was being negotiated. In a February 2016 op-ed against the TPP, Senator
Elizabeth Warren used the example of a French company suing Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage as an argument against the ISDS provisions of the TPP.
The Washington Posts editorial board has, however, challenged this characterization of the case, noting that "
Veolia of France, a waste management company, invoked ISDS to enforce a contract with the government of
Alexandria, Egypt, that it says required compensation if costs increased; the company maintains that the wage increases triggered this provision. Incidentally, Veolia was working with Alexandria on a
World Bank-supported project to reduce greenhouse gases, not some corporate plot to exploit the people. The case — which would result, at most, in a monetary award to Veolia, not the overthrow of the minimum wage — remains in litigation." The
Office of the United States Trade Representative challenges the notion that ISDS challenges "the sovereign ability of governments impose any measure they wish to protect labor rights, the environment, or other issues of public welfare". The United States is party to at least 50 such agreements, has only faced 13 ISDS cases and never lost an ISDS case. PIIE challenges the claim that ISDS "arbitrators lack integrity", noting that arbitrators take an oath of impartiality and both sides of a case choose arbitrators. The obligations include "laws on acceptable conditions of work related to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health." The
Peterson Institute for International Economics asserts that "the TPP includes more protections of labor rights than any previous US free trade agreement." In January 2016,
Human Rights Watch said that the TPP side agreements with Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei "are a unique and significant step in efforts to protect labor rights in trade agreements" but noted that enforcement of these rules remains to be seen: "gauging compliance will require subjective assessments by the US that may take years to carry out and face obstacles arising from foreign policy objectives, commercial interests, and other political considerations." Dartmouth economics Professor Emily J. Blanchard argues that while the TPP has been roundly criticized on the political left, progressives should actually be supportive of the TPP: "The TPP's promise of a new progressive rule book – one that includes enforceable agreements against child labor and workplace discrimination, measures to punish illegal logging and trade in protected species, and protections against consumer fraud – would mark a substantial step forward in the progressive policy agenda on the global stage." In May 2015, U.S. congressman
Sander Levin argued that it is difficult to enforce trade deals, as he questioned Vietnam's willingness to meet the labour standards of TPP. A report by U.S. Senator
Elizabeth Warren said that there was a huge gap between the labor standards of past US free trade agreements and the actual enforcement of those provisions.
Regulatory cooperation Even though the TPP had not been passed, the agreement had already introduced forms of regulatory cooperation for agriculture beyond that found in the WTO. This means that regulators in different TPP signatories have been engaging with each other and building trust. Chad P. Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues that this regulatory cooperation meant that the US poultry industry was not as hard-hit by the
2015 bird flu outbreak, as regulators in TPP countries cooperated and continued to accept US exports of poultry. == Economic impact ==