No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement

While the global financial crisis has exposed deep flaws in the free market, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Chile, Peru, and Vietnam are negotiating a free-trade agreement to surpass all others—here an international team of expert commentators expose the myths of yet another neo-liberal adventure

No ordinary free trade deal, The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been billed as an agreement fit for the 21st century—but no one is sure what that means. The U.S. sells this eight-country deal as the key to jobs and economic recovery, while protecting home markets; Australia hails it as a foundation stone for an APEC-wide free trade agreement; and New Zealand sees it as a magic bullet to open the U.S. dairy market—but none of these arguments stack up. Here Lori Wallach, Todd Tucker, John Quiggin, and other experts from Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and Chile examine the geopolitics and security context of the negotiations and set out the costs for other countries of making concessions to the U.S. simply to achieve a deal. They argue its obligations will intrude into core areas of domestic government policy which have nothing to do with imports and exports, including foreign investment, financial regulation, access to affordable medicines, food standards, services, and government procurement—the issues that caused majority public opposition to the 2004 U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Above all, this book exposes the contradictions of countries locking even deeper into a neo-liberal model of global free markets, when even political leaders admit that this has failed.