Despite Donald Trump’s snub, TPP trade deal will take effect at end of 2018 after Australia ratifies it
- Australia informed New Zealand that it had become the sixth nation to formally ratify the deal, alongside Canada, Japan, Mexico and Singapore
- The deal will reduce tariffs in economies that together amount to more than 13 per cent of global GDP. With the US, it would have represented 40 per cent
A massive trans-Pacific trade deal cleared a final hurdle on Wednesday allowing it to enter into force this year, a pointed rebuke of President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies from some of America’s closest allies.
Hours before an administrative deadline, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that his government had ratified the 11-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), meaning a quorum of more than half the members have formally signed on.
“Australia is the sixth country to ratify the agreement, meaning it can now enter into force on 30 December this year,” said centre-right leader Morrison.
Other signatories include G7 economies Japan and Canada.
The TPP has had an arduous birth and had appeared to be floundering when Trump withdrew US participation shortly after coming to office.
That turned out to be the opening salvo in Trump’s winner-takes-all, “America first” and threat-heavy approach to trade relations.
Frantic behind-the-scenes, Japanese-led diplomacy kept a slimmed-down version of the pact alive among the remaining members – in the hope that Washington will have a change of heart, or government, and will eventually join.
The deal was spearheaded by then-president Barack Obama, who saw it as a geopolitical power play, with ramifications far beyond trade – a way of binding rising Asian powers into a rules-based, American-backed order and countering China’s might-is-right approach to commerce in the Asia-Pacific region.