MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) mega-regional free trade deal is likely to be smoothly integrated into the existing free trade agreements of which the TPP countries are members, Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"This is the biggest market access package ever to be negotiated since the creation of the WTO. As the new global forum for trade rules, I am sure that TPP will find its way into various agreements where TPP members are involved," Lee-Makiyama said.
TPP encompasses the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Therefore, it overlaps with some of the already existing free trade zones, such as NAFTA (Canada, Mexico and the United States). A number of legal experts have voiced concerns over the conflation of TPP and other agreements once it is concluded.
There has been considerable opposition to TPP from international organizations and parliamentarians, who have criticized the deal’s secrecy during negotiations, its supposed favoring of multinational corporations and its exclusion of BRICS countries.
