From USTR:
TPP TOBACCO PROPOSAL
We are currently consulting with stakeholders and Congress on our draft proposal. Below is a detailed summary of the current draft proposal, which we have prepared in order to facilitate meaningful engagement on its contents. The draft proposal has three elements:
• It would explicitly recognize the unique status of tobacco products from a health and regulatory perspective.
• As in the past, the proposal would make tobacco products (like other products) subject to tariff phase-outs, thus avoiding putting U.S. tobacco products at a competitive disadvantage and avoiding a precedent for excluding tobacco or other products from future U.S. tariff negotiations. The United States will engage in discussions regarding the elimination of tariffs and tariff rate quotas with the four countries with which the United States is negotiating bilaterally—Brunei, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam. Tariffs and tariff rate quotas on tobacco and tobacco product trade with Australia, Chile, Peru and Singapore have already been eliminated or are being phased out under the provisions of our existing bilateral FTAs with those countries.
• The proposal would include language in the “general exceptions” chapter that allows health authorities in TPP governments to adopt regulations that impose origin-neutral, science-based restrictions on specific tobacco products/classes in order to safeguard public health. This language will create a safe harbor for FDA tobacco regulation, providing greater certainty that the provisions in the TPP will not be used in a manner that would prevent FDA from taking the sorts of incremental regulatory actions that are necessary to effectively implement the Tobacco Control Act, while retaining important trade disciplines (national treatment, compensation for expropriations, and transparency) on tobacco measures.
I can understand the parts about tariff phaseouts and requiring origin-neutral tobacco regulation. Protectionism is unlikely to help with public health goals, and may very well undermine them.
But there are two parts to this proposal that I wonder about. First, they talk about requiring any regulations to be "science-based." But if the regulations are origin-neutral (and I'm including de facto discrimination here), why should trade rules be concerned if they are not science-based? Is that too much of a burden to impose on regulators?
Second, the proposal refers to "compensation for expropriations" as an important trade discipline. I'm not aware of actual expropriation being a big issue in the tobacco industry. So, if we are talking about "regulatory" expropriation, it might be worth spelling out in more detail exactly what trade rules are envisioned here.
