The Trans-Pacific Partnership is no ordinary free trade deal. Billed as an agreement fit for the 21st century, no-one is sure what that means. The US sells it as the key to jobs and economic recovery, while protecting home markets. Australia hails it as a foundation stone for an APEC-wide free trade agreement. New Zealand sees it as a magic bullet to open the US dairy market. None of these arguments stacks up. Seven of the eight participant countries: the US, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are heavily liberalised, deregulated and privatised. They already have twelve free trade deals between them. No-one really believes that US dairy markets will be thrown open to New Zealand, or that China, India and Japan will sign onto a treaty they had no role in designing. Experts from Australia, New Zealand, the US and Chile examine the geopolitics and security context of the negotiations and set out the costs of making trade-offs to the US simply to achieve a deal. They argue its obligations will intrude into core areas of government policy and parliamentary responsibilities, including foreign investment, pharmaceutical schemes, food standards and intellectual property laws. Above all, No Ordinary Deal exposes the contradictions of locking our countries even deeper into a neoliberal model of global free markets - when even political leaders admit that this has failed.
