# Trans-Pacific Partnership The Trans-Pacific Partnership was a twelve-country Asia-Pacific trade agreement concluded in 2015 under [[Barack Obama]], covering roughly 40% of world GDP. Its explicit strategic purpose was to set the region's trade rules before China did — Obama's formulation was that otherwise "China will write the rules for the world's fastest-growing region." **The United States withdrew on 23 January 2017**, three days into the first Trump administration. The remaining eleven countries went ahead without it, suspending about twenty provisions the US had insisted on (mostly intellectual property and investor-state dispute settlement), and signed the **Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership** in 2018. The CPTPP exists today and is growing. The United States is not in it. ## The 2016 Repudiation TPP is the single clearest case of bipartisan convergence against trade liberalization in modern American politics, and it happened fast. The agreement was an Obama administration priority negotiated over seven years. By the 2016 general election, **[[Donald Trump]] opposed it, [[Bernie Sanders]] opposed it, and [[Hillary Clinton]] — who as Secretary of State had called it "the gold standard in trade agreements" — had reversed to oppose it.** Organized labor opposed it. It never received a ratification vote. Something had shifted underneath the elite consensus, and both parties' nominees read it correctly at roughly the same moment. The proximate cause was the [[NAFTA]] experience compounded by the post-2001 [[China Shock]]: two decades in which the promised gains were diffuse and the losses were concentrated in places that vote. What makes TPP distinct from NAFTA is that it was designed as a *response* to that experience — with labor and environment chapters, and with China deliberately excluded. It was defeated anyway, which suggests the objection had hardened past the point where design changes could address it. ## The CPTPP Today **Twelve members:** Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the **United Kingdom** — whose accession completed after signing in 2023, making it the first new member and the first from outside the Pacific rim. **Accession pipeline as of the June 2026 Commission Meeting:** - **Costa Rica** — negotiations substantially concluded 6 May 2026; legal documentation being finalized. No signing or entry-into-force date set. - **Uruguay** — working group instructed to accelerate. - **UAE, the Philippines, Indonesia** — preparatory discussions authorized. - A new **Customs Working Group** was created on rules of origin and customs administration, explicitly aimed at illegal transshipment and circumvention. As with [[USMCA]] and the [[ASEAN]] bilaterals, that means China. - Trade and investment dialogues with [[ASEAN]] and the [[European Union]] were reaffirmed. **China and Taiwan both applied in September 2021. Neither has an accession working group.** Neither appears in the June 2026 outcomes, which advanced five other candidates. The applications are frozen — the strategic question the agreement was built around, still unanswered five years on. **Argentina has also applied**, which is generating friction inside [[Mercosur]], whose members are not supposed to negotiate trade agreements independently. ## The US Posture Unchanged. The United States remains outside, and there has been no statement, review, or proposal to rejoin in 2025 or 2026. The administration's model is bilateral reciprocal agreements — see [[ASEAN]] — which is the functional opposite of acceding to a multilateral bloc with common rules and dispute settlement. ## Why It Matters Here TPP is the counterfactual the vault should keep in view. The agreement was explicitly designed to do what current policy says it wants — constrain China's economic reach, set favorable rules for American firms, build a coalition in Asia. It was rejected on grounds that had been earned in the [[NAFTA]] and China-shock decades, by a coalition spanning both parties. Nine years later the same objective is being pursued through unilateral tariffs and bilateral agreements with individual Southeast Asian states, while the multilateral bloc the US assembled and abandoned continues without it and is being joined by the UK, Costa Rica, and possibly Uruguay and the Philippines. Whether that is a vindication or a self-inflicted wound is the live argument. What is not arguable is that the bloc still exists, still admits members, and still writes rules — and that the United States has no vote in it. ## See Also - [[NAFTA]] — the experience that made TPP unratifiable - [[ASEAN]] — where the bilateral alternative is being built - [[World Trade Organization]] — the multilateral tier above - [[USMCA]] — the other agreement where transshipment is the fight - [[Mercosur]] — where an Argentine CPTPP bid is causing friction - [[Free Trade]] · [[Protectionism]] · [[Economic Nationalism]]