Negotiations involve give and take and there will be losses with the wins. Pharmac was saved even though it means the taxpayer will have to fork out a few million a year in ransom money, or increased costs because of greater transparency, as our negotiators prefer to call it.
New Zealand will also have to rejig its copyright legislation to further weaken the public domain, and again, we'll pay for it: copyright terms in TPP countries will be extended to a whopping life plus 70 years, up from life plus 50 years.
This will apply to orphaned copyrighted works where the original rights holder can no longer be found and it's estimated it will cost New Zealand consumers about $55 million, money that will in many cases flow overseas. At least there will be some time to phase in the longer copyright term, and fingers crossed, it won't apply retroactively to works already in the public domain as that would create an enormous mess.
Also, the litigation swamp and innovation killer that is software patents appears to be off the table in the TPP.
Kiwi tech businesses should benefit from the TPP if it opens up private and government procurement opportunities in Pacific Rim countries, but the question is to what extent as the trade deal offers some real sweeteners for the massive multinationals with their formidable economies of scale that compete with our smaller firms.
For instance, despite all the uproar around the likes of Google moving profits earned from countries they operate in, no TPP nation will be able to insist that multinationals have a local presence. This is what the United States trade representative called "forced localisation" and it means the tech giants don't have to keep data, servers, facilities and staff in the country in which they operate.
The TPP also "preserves the free international movement of data", which the USTR tied up with individuals and families being able to do their online shopping "at low cost" among other things.
That sounds like the TPP will sink New Zealand's (and Australian) plans to add goods and services tax to digital goods which, if correct, will delight the likes of Amazon and Apple but local retailers not so much.
Despite the agreement in Atlanta, the TPP isn't yet binding and there's even speculation that it could collapse just like the oddly named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) did and never come into force. Even so, now's the time to publish the full text of the TPP to allow New Zealand businesses to read it and prepare for what could potentially be a very different environment for them over the next decade.
The fast-moving tech sector in particular needs certainty around the immediate future, and to see exactly what the TPP has in store - positives and poison pills alike.
