A REQUIEM FOR THE TRANS PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP: SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD, AND SOMETHING BORROWED?Asean Investment Agreement • December 8th, 2017
On 4 February 2016, after almost seven years of negotiations, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (‘TPP’) was signed by 12 negotiating countries. The TPP was then labelled by all signatory countries as a ‘new’, ‘high standard’, and ‘21st century agreement’. However, the ratification process of the agreement was stalled and most likely in a definitive way, after the United States decided to withdraw from the TPP in January 2017. Before regretting this development, looking back to the halt of the ratification process of the TPP one can ask how much innovation this treaty really had and the usefulness of mourning the failure of having a TPP agreement, either in terms of future usage of TPP text, or in terms of political relevancy. This article aims to describe the level of novelty of the TPP, specifically in comparison with existing trade and investment agreements between TPP signatory countries, notably the United States. For that purpose, we have focused on the core disciplines of t
