Liz Warren plays political games too

[hedda_foil]

22. Let's look at the facts.

The TPP didn't begin in 2002. You are referring to a separate and ratified agreement among 4 of the parties. It's likely that when two more AsiaPac countries joined the original four, the U.S. government got justifiably nervous about China's potentially wooing those nations into their orbit. Here's a very good explanation from Wikipedia.

Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership AgreementEdit
During the 2002 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders' Meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, Prime Ministers Helen Clark of New Zealand, Goh Chok Tong of Singapore and Chilean President Ricardo Lagos began negotiations on the Pacific Three Closer Economic Partnership (P3-CEP). Brunei first took part as a full negotiating party in April 2005 before the fifth, and final round of talks.[30] Subsequently, the agreement was renamed to TPSEP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership agreement or Pacific-4). Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPSEP or P4) were concluded by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore on 3 June 2005,[2] and entered into force on 28 May 2006 for New Zealand and Singapore, 12 July 2006 for Brunei, and 8 November 2006 for Chile.[31]

The original TPSEP agreement contains an accession clause and affirms the members' "commitment to encourage the accession to this Agreement by other economies".[30][32] It is a comprehensive agreement, affecting trade in goods, rules of origin, trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, trade in services, intellectual property, government procurement and competition policy. Among other things, it called for reduction by 90 percent of all tariffs between member countries by 1 January 2006, and reduction of all trade tariffs to zero by the year 2015.[33]

Although original and negotiating parties are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the TPSEP (and the TPP it grew into) are not APEC initiatives. However, the TPP is considered to be a pathfinder for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an APEC initiative.

Trans-Pacific PartnershipEdit
In January 2008, the US agreed to enter into talks with the Pacific 4 (P4) members regarding trade liberalisation in financial services.[34] On 22 September 2008, under president George W Bush, US Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab announced that the US would be the first country to begin negotiations with the P4 countries to join the TPP, with the first round of talks in early 2009.[35][36]

In November 2008, Australia, Vietnam, and Peru announced that they would join the P4 trade bloc.[37][38] In October 2010, Malaysia announced that it had also joined the TPP negotiations.[39][40][41]

After the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009, the anticipated March 2009 negotiations were postponed. However, in his first trip to Asia in November 2009, president Obama reaffirmed the US's commitment to the TPP, and on 14 December 2009, new US Trade Representative Ron Kirk notified Congress that President Obama planned to enter TPP negotiations "with the objective of shaping a high-standard, broad-based regional pact".[42]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#History