TPP Risks and TTIP Opportunities: Rules of Origin, Trade Diversion, and Developing Countries

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, if completed and implemented, will cover a large portion of global trade and investment, but they will exclude the majority of developing countries. American and European negotiators also want these deals to be “gold standard” agreements that establish the new rules of trade for a new century. The biggest concern arising from these mega-regional agreements is that they will undermine the rules-based multilateral trading system. More immediately, preferential trade arrangements divert trade from outsiders and the new or expanded rules that US and EU negotiators want to establish as precedents for the global system will not always be optimal for poorer countries.