[JURIST] A dozen Pacific Rim nations, including the US, on Monday announced that they have agreed to a historic regional trade pact that links 40 percent of the global economy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest such accord in history, will provide uty-free trade [Bloomberg report] on most goods while reducing tariffs on others. This will eliminate many barriers [NYT report] to international trade as well as establish uniform rules on the intellectual property of corporations. It would also open the Internet, even in areas like communist Vietnam. The deal is the product of five years of negotiations between the countries, which include [BBC report] Japan, Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. US President Barack Obama praised the deal, saying that it gave workers the “fair shot at success they deserve” and that they should be able to write the rules of the global economy to open new markets to American products while setting high standard for protecting workers and the environment.

The development of the TPP has had an impact on US trade laws in recent months. In June the US House of Representatives voted [JURIST report] 286-138 to approve a trade law that provides assistance to workers who lose their jobs to international trade and renews Obama’s authority to negotiate trade deals on behalf of the country. The Trade Preference Extension Act includes measures Obama had long pushed for and was seen as clearing the way for him to complete negotiations on the TPP. Also in June South Korea and China signed [JURIST report] a bilateral free trade agreement that will eliminate most tariffs between the two countries over the next two decades after about three years of negotiations. In July 2014 the European Court of Justice ruled [JURIST report] that the European Commission was not being sufficiently transparent regarding negotiations with the US on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which aims to remove trade barriers between the EU and US.