Services in the Trans-Pacific Partnership : What Would Be Lost?
As the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) hangs in balance, an evaluation of what it offers could inform current decisions and shape future negotiations. The TPP's services component has been hailed as one of the agreement's majo...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/512711486497950394/Services-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-what-would-be-lost http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26023 |
| Summary: | As the fate of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) hangs in balance, an evaluation of what it
offers could inform current decisions and shape future
negotiations. The TPP's services component has been
hailed as one of the agreement's major accomplishments.
To assess the agreement’s impact on national policy in the
major services sectors, we created a new public database.
This database reveals that TPP commitments seldom go beyond
countries' applied policies, suggesting the explicit
liberalization resulting from the agreement is limited only
to a few countries and a few areas. However, the TPP
enhances transparency and policy certainty because
parties' services commitments cover more trading
partners, more sectors and are in some cases closer to
applied policies than their commitments under previous
agreements. Furthermore, new TPP rules, including on
state-owned enterprises, government procurement and
competition policy, could enhance services market access. In
particular, the TPP breaks new ground in prohibiting
restrictions on international data flows, while at the same
time creating unprecedented obligations on all parties to
protect consumers from fraud and protect privacy. These dual
obligations on importing and exporting countries represent a
model for regulatory cooperation that could elicit greater
market opening if applied to other areas. |
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