The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a step backwards to the days before the World Trade Organisation when the US and Europe controlled the global trading system to the detriment of developing economies, says a former director-general of the WTO, Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand.
In New Zealand for a meeting of the honorary advisers to the Asia-New Zealand Foundation, Supachai told BusinessDesk in an interview that Asian economies had more to gain by pursuing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes China and India but not the US, than TPP, which he described as a "US-centric" trade deal.
New Zealand is one of three countries that initiated the TPP concept and has committed substantial resources to its negotiation, but it only gained momentum once the US became a member of the 12-country grouping seeking a new set of trade rules for an Asia-Pacific trade bloc. The US and Europe are also negotiating a TPP-style deal, known as TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).
"TTIP and TTP together could drive the world back into the old days before the WTO was conceived, a world trading system predominated by major trading nations, which was something I thought we tried to adjust with the more democratic participation of membership of the WTO," said Supachai, who was director-general of the WTO from 2002 to 2005, immediately after former New Zealand prime minister Mike Moore.
New Zealand belongs to both TPP and RCEP, which was initiated in 2012, and is part of the four year-old Association of South-East Asian Nations Free Trade Area (AFTA), most of whose members are involved in both TTP and RCEP.