TRANSPACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (TPP)
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement among twelve Pacific Rim countries signed on 4 February 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand after 7 years of negotiations, which has not entered into force. The 30 chapters of the TPP Agreement concern many matters of public policy and a stated goal to "promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhanced labor and environmental protections."
Two areas central to health are threatening to kill the TPP in the US: disagreements over the so-called tobacco carve-out and the undercutting of US patent terms for biologics. For developing countries however, the patent provisions in the TPP remain life-threateningly harmful as MSF reports |
TPP and Health Trans-Pacific Partnership Provisions in Intellectual Property, Transparency, and Investment Chapters Threaten Access to Medicines in the US and Elsewhere
"The multiple TPP provisions that extend pharmaceutical powers should be scaled back to the minimum consensus standards reached in the 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. Health advocates should convince the US Congress and opponents in other countries to reject an agreement that could so adversely impact access to medicines." Read more here Canada's new government should reject the TPP in its current form Tobacco The TPP contains a contested carve-out for tobacco in the ISDS chapter. While many US tobacco control advocates champion this as a break through, others in the public health community argue that it is actually damaging to public health on the grounds of its legal weakness and exclusion of other danger areas such as alcohol and unhealthy foods. In reality, the only way to protect countries from investor disputes over tobacco would be to exclude ISDS from all trade agreements. |