The TPP SPS chapter: not a “model for the rest of the world”
IATP | 12 November 2015
The TPP SPS chapter: not a “model for the rest of the world”
by Steve Suppan
Proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, and particularly the White House, have insisted that the TPP is a “high standards” agreement. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) “measures” affecting food safety and animal and plant health of agricultural trade are part of these “high standards.” Indeed, the TPP and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are characterized as a “model for the rest of the world” by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. Far beyond any changes in tariffs, the most important U.S. export in the TPP is the making and enforcement of rules by which all TPP members, and any other countries that wish to export to the United States, must abide.
If the U.S. regulatory system and its scientific underpinnings had not been captured by the regulated industries, it might be credible to claim that repeating the mantra of “high standards” might help lead to improvements in public and environmental health and worker safety. TPP proponent support for Congressional regulatory “reform” and lawsuits for “regulatory overreach” indicates to us that what is being exported is a framework for regulatory capture that will be legitimated by reference to binding trade commitments and, in the case of the TPP SPS chapter, by “science.”
The TPP chapter on SPS measures is a mere 18 pages of the total 6,194. Following the Obama administration’s November 5 release of the TPP text, the U.S. Congress and the public have 90 calendar days to review the text before President Barrack Obama can sign the TPP. Then the clock begins to tick on implementing legislation to accept or reject the 6,194 pages, perhaps as early as May 2016. No amendments are allowed to U.S. trade agreements, according to the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that Congress granted to the Obama administration on June 29.
What follows is a critical interpretation of parts of the SPS chapter in the context of how the U.S. regulatory structure operates. Like the confidential USTR-industry dialogue and the intergovernmental negotiations that produced the chapter, the text alone reveals very little about how governments will provide the “appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection” promised in the World Trade Organization SPS Agreement (Article 5.3). The TPP chapter promises to “build upon and reinforce” (Article 7.2b) that Agreement and the thousands of pages of SPS texts and numerical standards of international organizations referenced in the appendices to the WTO SPS Agreement. But textual explication alone reveals nothing of the capacity of U.S. regulatory agencies to implement and enforce the text to protect public, animal, plant and environmental health and life, per their obligations under U.S. law.
In addition, the negotiators decided to locate provisions on “Trade in Products of Modern Biotechnology” for agricultural trade (Article 2.29) in Chapter 2, “National Treatment and Market Access for Goods,” apparently believing that “modern biotechnology” does not pose SPS issues about which there might be controversy. Since the text neglects to reference the relationship of Article 2.29 to the SPS chapter, we are obliged to explain the reference in this short analysis.
