The TPP: Truths about Power Politics

Abstract

Preferential trade agreements are negotiated by states. By definition, they are political in nature. The more powerful the state involved, the more it can shape the trajectory of trade negotiations. The three stages of the TPP – before the US joined, while the US was a TPP member, and the US withdrawal from TPP – reaffirm this political-economic truth. Political interests often trump economic ones when it comes to trade agreements. This paper analyses the three stages of the TPP using the tools of International Relations. It highlights key political truths that are reaffirmed by each TPP stage. The first phase highlights how small states interact in the hierarchical inter-state system as policy brokers and policy entrepreneurs to attract the interest of larger states. The second stage underlines how the US-China rivalry for regional leadership in East Asia shaped how the TPP with the US in it was interpreted in primarily strategic not economic terms as was the way the Obama administration tried to sell the TPP to a trade-wary Congress. The third stage, US withdrawal and the post-US TPP, is still in its early days. Yet, the nature of the US withdrawal and the reasons given by President Trump for this, reinforce the fact that strategic interests are not fixed and predictable but are contingent on leaders’ beliefs. Political interests are often more important to the trajectory of trade agreements than economic ones and are less quantifiable and more variable.