Latest TPP Leak Shows US Still Pushing Terrible DRM and Copyright Term Proposals
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The right question is: What do partner countries' politicians gain from TPP?
The talks between Europe and the US (TTIP) are largely to remove barriers in legislation for corporations. E.g. new medication and chemicals can be sold in Europe/US if either passing FDA review or EU review.
This will save corporations millions of dollars. Wikipedia has a quite good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...
As a citizen of a country I'll doubt you'll have any benefits from it. People in Europe are worried (I think not without reason) that it will worsen safety regulations for consumers.
Coincidently patents and intellectual property are also a big discussion point that is discussed there. Intellectual property rights will be tightened and likely generic medication will be more difficult to produce.
See the comment I already made: more drugs can be brought to the market because the cost is lower.
> you say it would be more profitable to make certain drugs, and then you say it would lower the prices , which will make (obviously) less profitable to make/sell those same drugs. So which one is it?
Lower production costs increases profits and price competition lowers profits (passing savings onto the consumer).
In addition, it tries to remove non-tariff barriers to trade, which involves harmonizing legislation. E.g. if you want to sell US beef in Japan and Japanese beef in the US, then the health regulations about how cows should be raised should be the same in both countries.
The copyright stuff comes under the heading of harmonizing intellectual property law, although somehow it seems to end up as pro-copyright-holder as possible...
As you point out in the copyright example, this is an immediate race to the regulations that are best for businesses. So in this plan, Japanese consumers would be subject to health regulations constructed on behalf of corporations by a broken and regulatory-captured US political system.
Ultimately, the health regulations of their food would be that imposed by US companies, regardless of the political actions of the Japanese electorate.
This is not harmony, it is discord.
And is equivalent to a tariff.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/free-trade-explained-...
It hasn't happened historically, and it isn't likely to happen now, but we will get a bunch of draconian legislation nobody wants through TPP.