The TPP Agreement concerns a variety of matters of public policy and its stated goal is to “promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhanced labour and environmental protections.” The Agreement contains measures to lower trade barriers such as tariffs and establish an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. The United States government has considered the TPP as the companion agreement to the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a broadly similar agreement between the United States and the European Union.
The TPP is an expansion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPSEP), which was signed by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore in 2005. Beginning in 2008, additional countries joined the discussion for a broader agreement: Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Vietnam, bringing the total number of participating countries in the negotiations to twelve. Participating nations aimed at completing negotiations in 2012, but contentious issues such as agriculture, intellectual property, and services and investments prolonged negotiations. They finally reached agreement on 5 October 2015. Implementing the TPP has been one of the trade agenda goals in the final stretch of the Obama administration in the US.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
