Reimagining the Trans-Pacific Partnership

“Reimagining the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” an op-ed co-written by Akin Gump public law and policy partner Clete Willems and senior policy consultant Wendy Cutler, has been published by The Hill.

The article discusses this week’s kickoff negotiating session among 14 countries, including the U.S., for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), an initiative designed to “underscore the strong U.S. economic commitment to the region,” the authors write. They add, “Such efforts are long overdue.”

The article discusses why that is the case, including China’s increased presence in the Indo-Pacific region, including the 2022 entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, the largest trade agreement in the world. The pact’s features “make it easier for RCEP participants to buy Chinese products instead of American ones, easier to link supply chains with China than the United States and harder for the United States to promote its market-based economic model, environmental stewardship and respect for workers’ rights, among other core values.”

The authors note the Biden-Harris administration’s work to reverse “this troubling trend” through efforts on resilient supply chains, the digital economy and clean energy. But, they note, by not including tariff cuts and market access provisions, the IPEF lacks an important tool that could benefit the U.S.

Willems and Cutler then discuss the Comprehensive and Progress Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which the U.S. previously pursued as a way of removing thousands of tariff and nontariff barriers to U.S. goods and services and helping the U.S. promote a market-based economic model in the Pacific region.

They note the advantages of a return to the CPTPP, but also its critical shortcomings, and their belief, as a consequence, that the U.S. should not rejoin the CPTPP as currently constituted. This is not to say that it should be dismissed, they write, but U.S. policymakers might consider whether it is possible to “revise the agreement to meet American interests.”

The authors believe that it can, linking to a new report written by them and published under the auspices of the Asia Society Policy Institute, “Reimagining the TPP: Revisions that Could Facilitate U.S. Reentry.”

They close by noting, “We do not purport to have all of the answers, but we ultimately believe that a revised CPTPP that includes the changes recommended would meet U.S. economic and strategic interests and could ultimately garner bipartisan support from the U.S. Congress and the American people.”

To read the full article, click here.