Continuing with the theme of issues I think are interesting, but few people are talking about, let me raise again the question of whether there should be a TPP Secretariat. This is from Deborah Elms:
The TPP requires a robust Secretariat to ensure the long-term health and success of this trade agreement.
This is not a topic that excites very many people. Everyone is much more interested in discussing what is or is not included in the agreement, getting the deal done, and discussing the timing of it all. Yet if the right framework is not chosen for the TPP as a whole, the entire agreement will swiftly fade into irrelevance. More than 5 years worth of hard bargaining could be lost along with most of the promises of future benefits.
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The option currently on the table in the TPP consists of a set of standing committees, similar to what has been used in different bilateral trade agreements in the past.
Yet anyone who has ever worked in a large business or volunteer organization immediately grasps the problem of leaving important tasks to a committee. Not all committees are hopeless, of course. But the success of many committees relies on finding committed and determined individuals who have (or create) the time to focus relentlessly on committee tasks.
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Under most trade agreements, changes and monitoring are set to take place in various committees—for goods, services, etc. as well as an overall coordinating committee group. But even in most regular deals, the committee structure rarely works as promised. The groups do not meet as originally planned. National level trade desk officers in charge of attending the committees do not really have time to pay attention to the agreement in between review periods at all.
The reality is that very little change ever happens in the review sessions. To even get members in a bilateral agreement to make a change often requires parties to agree on a protocol of amendment in the first place. No good bureaucrat is likely to argue for drafting a new protocol of amendment unless the issue under discussion is extremely critical.
So existing agreements quickly get out of date. This is not supposed to happen in the TPP, because it is meant to be a “living agreement.” (More on this idea in a future post.) But without a dedicated group of people monitoring the deal, it is not at all likely that the TPP will actually be amended as necessary over time.
For these reasons alone, the TPP needs a standing Secretariat to keep track of the agreement.
But the argument for a specialized set of experts to manage the agreement gets even more compelling when you realize the TPP is supposed to expand again in the near-term. The current teams of negotiators are likely to be disbanded as soon as the TPP agreement is concluded. Many of these folks will be heading off to a well-earned retirement or new careers entirely after five grueling years of continual travel and hard bargaining.
There are already a number of countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Columbia and the Philippines that have expressed interest in joining the TPP as soon as possible. By 2018, the TPP could have 19 countries working together to craft accession terms and market access commitments. Managing all these diverse interests will require a dedicated Secretariat.
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It seems clear that the TPP requires a dedicated Secretariat. Current negotiating members are not enthusiastic about this idea, as it requires deciding on budgets, staffing and the identification of a suitable host. But in the absence of a Secretariat, it is likely that many of the benefits of the TPP will be lost or will not be fully exploited. It would be a shame to finally get a deep, broad and important agreement completed and watch it crumble for want of a decent institutional framework.
I don't hear anyone else talking about this, and I haven't seen any leaks about discussions of this issue, so I suspect it won't happen. But I think she is right about the need for a permanent institution to manage the TPP. I suggested having the WTO Secretariat do it, or linking the two secretariats somehow, because I worry about the effect of competing secretariats. But regardless of which approach to a secretariat that you take, I agree that it would be useful to have something in place if you want the TPP to have a real impact.