The agreement runs to 6000 pages of difficult legal and technical references, but law professor Jane Kelsey has been studying trade position papers for years and I've been waiting for her to find something explosive in the fine print. She provided a conclusion in a column published in this paper on Thursday.
Whereas previously she had feared the US would gets its way on practically every issue, now she hopes and expects the deal will be rejected by the US Congress because the terms finally agreed are not very favourable to the US after all.
A World Bank assessment this week came to the same conclusion. That will not help its reception in the Congress but professional bodies in this country ought to acknowledge it is not the spectre they had been given to expect. Pharmac is going to be okay. The US has not got its way on pharmaceutical protection periods. Our IT innovation appears to be under no more pressure from US patent law than it was before.
Their only remaining concern may be investors' rights to sue for compensation in independent international tribunals if a government's action unreasonably reduces the value of an investment. But that is not new, disputes tribunals were part of post-war international trade rules, and the principle is perfectly reasonable.
It is unlikely any government New Zealanders would elect, whether led by National or Labour, would need to be taken to a tribunal. They would expect to compensate an investor for a policy change the investor could not reasonably have foreseen. I don't know what kind of government protesters have in mind when they call the TPP's dispute provisions a threat to "democracy". Or maybe I do.
Their noise will be a fitting backdrop for the occasion of the signing, a reminder of how hard the politics of trade negotiations can be. I wonder if it would have been easier for a Labour Government once the US came into the TPP.
Back when it started, the Doha round had stalled and the Bush Administration was doing free trade agreements mostly for strategic reasons, with members of its "coalition of the willing" in Iraq and moderate Muslim countries it wanted to keep onside. New Zealand was not on the list. But our leading trade diplomats, notably Tim Groser, were pushing for something better - a comprehensive Pacific agreement that would pick up the batten dropped at Doha.
The US was not interested until President Obama had come to power. His interests were no less strategic than Bush's. TPP suited Obama's "pivot to Asia", and it will probably pass the Congress in the end for strategic reasons too, since China is not in. But to get this far is a remarkable achievement.
The fact that the signing will be done in New Zealand is plain testament to the driving role this country has played.
That has not always been clear in recent years, particularly once Japan came in over New Zealand's objections.
But behind the scenes, Groser and Key must have been more effective than they can publicly say. Key, elected in the same week as Obama, established an important personal rapport. At times when the talks failed to reach predicted agreement and Key was asked whether he still thought the TPP would succeed, he'd say, "I think so. Obama wants to do it."
Their trade ministers will do the signing. I hope the noise is deafening. This is a big deal.
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