[JURIST] UN human rights expert Alfred de Zayas [official profile] on Tuesday urged governments in the Pacific Rim not to sign [press release] the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) without first “reaffirming … human rights treaty obligations and their recent pledges to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.” Urging a “new generation of trade agreements … [that] incorporate human rights and developments,” Zayas proceeded to say that the TPP was “fundamentally flawed.” Zayas believes that the TPP, as currently written, will boost the position of large corporations and their investors while sacrificing the needs of the public, putting a strain on the labor market, security of food, and the environment.

The development of the TPP has had an impact on US trade laws in the last year. 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 included 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.