Agriculture and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations

One of the more innovative aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations has been an emphasis on granting full market access to member countries with ‘no exceptions’. This statement has been made repeatedly from the earliest days of the negotiations in March 2010 and reiterated often throughout the talks. Even if – in the end – there are modest levels of protection remaining in a very limited number of agricultural sectors, the promises to open the market fully remain striking. A willingness to open markets with no exceptions means putting the most sensitive areas up for discussion. For nearly all countries, this means agricultural products. For a variety of reasons, including history, culture, and politics, agriculture usually holds special significance to states. As this chapter highlights, unlike industrial goods, neither repeated commitments in multilateral fora like those created by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) nor promises made in regional or bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have resulted in similar low levels of protection for agricultural products. Yet officials have pledged in the TPP to put these highly sensitive areas up for liberalisation to the other partners. Why are officials so prepared to take on this task in the TPP when they have been unwilling to do so in other venues?