Source: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

The eighth round of closed-door negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be held in Chicago from September 6-15, 2011. Negotiations during this round are expected to be substantial, as the current nine negotiating countries, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, plan to present the outlines of an agreement at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) Leaders’ meeting in Honolulu, November 8-13 2011.

According to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), “U.S. involvement in the TPP is predicated on the expansion of the agreement to include more economies across the Asia-Pacific region,”2 and should “set the standard for 21st-century trade agreements going forward.”3 It is therefore expected that the norms that emerge from these negotiations will serve as a baseline for future trade agreements, potentially impacting a much wider group of countries, including developing countries where MSF has medical operations and beyond. For example, Japan and South Korea are reportedly currently considering joining the TPP.

TPP negotiating parties are under no obligation to subject their negotiating positions to public scrutiny; only the final agreed-upon text will be made publicly available. However, a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now available to the public,4 indicates that the U.S. is demanding aggressive intellectual property provisions that go beyond what international trade law requires. Furthermore, the U.S. position represents a major retreat from
previous U.S. commitments to global health, including the 2007 bipartisan New Trade Policy, in which Congress and the Bush administration agreed to abide by important public health safeguards in future trade agreements.

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