January 10, 2016: Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes that the TPP faces an uphill battle for US ratification, opposed by all leading Democratic presidential candidates and many Republicans. The TPP severely constrains environmental, health, and safety regulation, and even financial regulations with significant macroeconomic impacts.
January 9, 2016: The Huffington Post reports that just two months after the Obama administration rejected TransCanada's bid to build the dangerous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline - a landmark victory for the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground - the Canadian corporation announced it will retaliate by using ISDS in NAFTA, a TPP-like trade deal,
December 31, 2015: Public health experts write in the NZ Herald that the TPP seeks to establish "a predictable legal and commercial framework for trade and investment" which gives global corporations power to sue governments over regulation like action to reduce carbon emissions.
The TPP text of thousands of pages was released in November last year and it confirms our fears. The text will now be reviewed by parliamentary committees from February 2016 before Parliament votes on the implementing legislation. AFTINET is campaigning to block the TPP legislation in the Senate.
December 21, 2015 Kyla Tienhaara's opinion piece in the Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald and other Fairfax media welcomes the defeat of the Philip Morris ISDS case against Australia, but explains why ISDS in the TPP could still result in future cases against other health or environmental laws. Dr Patricia Ranald answers corporate law defenders of ISDS quoted on the ABC website.
December 2, 2015:The official US Labor Advisory Committee Report on the TPP concludes "Trade rules that enhance the already formidable economic and political power of global corporations—including investor-to-state dispute settlement, excessive monopoly rights for pharmaceutical products, and deregulatory financial services and sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules—will continue to undermine worker bargaining power, here and abroad, as well as weaken democratic processes and regulatory capacity across all 12 TPP countries."
November 30: The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has criticised monopoly intellectual property provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and called for an independent review before signing, and has also criticised the TPP ISDS provisions which allow foreign corporations to sue governments over changes to domestic law.
Senator Nick Xenophon says China FTA and TPP not in national interest: Australia has been played for a mug. See video of speech here
November 10 2015: Investment law expert George Kahale says ISDS safeguards in TPP worthless
The TPP text of 30 chapters and thousands of pages was released on November 5, 2016.
See AFTINET's submission to the JSCOT Inquiry on the TPP here (March 2016)
There is longer analysis on investor rights, medicine prices, national regulation of medicines, alcohol labelling, the environment, labor rights, copyright, trade in services, electronic commerce and financial services.
For shorter summaries see AFTINET's latest TPP flyer, a short summary of the TPP's impacts on four key areas, a summary on investor rights, and our explainer article TPP: What you need to know & what you can do about it. There is also a short summary video or full video of our November 2015 TPP forum.
Last updated: March 2016