The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Asia-Pacific Integration: A Quantitative Assessment

While global trade negotiations remain stalled, two tracks of trade negotiations in the Asia-Pacific—the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and a parallel Asian track—could generate momentum for renewed liberalization and provide pathways to region-wide free trade. This book investigates what these trade negotiations could mean to the world economy. Petri, Plummer, and Zhai estimate that world income would rise by $295 billion per year on the TPP track, by $766 billion if both tracks are successful, and by $1.9 trillion if the tracks ultimately combine to yield region-wide free trade. They find that the tracks are competitive initially but their strategic implications appear to be constructive: the agreements would generate incentives for enlargement and mutual progress and, over time, for region-wide consolidation. The authors conclude that the crucial importance of Asia-Pacific integration argues for an early conclusion of the TPP negotiations, but without jeopardizing the prospects for region-wide or even global agreements based on it in the future.