Trans Pacific Partnership Paper

...

Chinese President, “Xi Jinping and his American counterparts are using the term “integration” in the same way and with the same meaning as the architects of the European Union. Which is to say that, like the EU architects, they intend to use economic integration to pave the way for eventual political integration of APEC/TPP/FTAAP member countries into a Trans-Pacific Union” (2015). Gomez says that one downfall to such a union is that the U.S. would end up being a subordinate member state to “Eastern-bloc Marxist states such as China, Vietnam, and Russia at the helm basically eliminating American sovereignty and independence (2015).

At this point it seems that the TPP is stalled. Without major concessions from Japan, President Obama will not likely get TPA in order to continue negotiations and passing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Oct. 2014). In addition, “the fate of TPP as a matter of foreign policy is caught between a grand scheme to knit together 40 percent of the world's economy, on the one hand, and the triangle of disagreement over sovereignty and security involving the three most important economies in Asia, on the other” Feldman, 2014).

Backer concludes that “Japan remains steadily fixed between the United States and China. With the election of Prime Minister Abe, Japan has chosen a middle course, but one that pushes it further into the complex entanglements between the United States and China. Japan’s decision to participate in TPP negotiations drives Japan more closely to the center of current efforts to define and control the regulatory structures of trade in the Pacific basin. By extension, TPP may also control the shape of legitimate government and government policy among TPP states and those who trade with them. This represents a closer alignment of Japan with the United States. But it represents a threat to the People’s Republic of China as well. That threat is direct—representing to the Chinese what may appear as another piece of the U.S. strategy to encircle China militarily and economically and to isolate it from the center of current efforts to develop transnational regulatory structures. To that extent, Japan’s commitment to the TPP represents a direct threat to emerging Chinese interests, a threat that China will respond to against the United States and Japan (2014).

---------------------------------------------------------------

References

America's big bet; free-trade pacts. (2014, Nov 15). The Economist, 413, 8-n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1625584846?accountid=9253

Backer, L. C. (2014). The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Japan, China, The U.S. and the emerging shape of a new world trade regulatory order. Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 13(1), 49-81.

Donnan, S. (2015). US Trade chief moves within reach of big Trans-Pacific prize. Financial Times, World News, p5.

Feldman, E. (2014). United States: The Pivot to Asia and the Inevitable Failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Mondaq Business Briefing.

Gomez, C. (2015). Trans-Pacific Partnership to Facilitate U.S.-China Merger. New American (08856540), 31(3), 19-21.

Stalemate; japan, america and the trans-pacific partnership. (2014, Oct 04). The Economist, 413, 47. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1569728872?accountid=9253

Trans-pacific partnership: What will it achieve? (2014). International Financial Law Review, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1498536187?accountid=9253