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Revised TDM Call for Papers Special Issue on: "Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)"

26 March 2018

Elizabeth Whitsitt, Devin Bray, Julien Chaisse, Tomoko Ishikawa, Joongi Kim, Stephanie Forrest, Donald Robertson and Frédéric Sourgens will be editing a Special Issue of Transnational Dispute Management (TDM, ISSN 1875-4120, www.transnational-dispute-management.com) on the CPTPP between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

The CPTPP is one of three mega-regional agreements that will change the landscape of the international economic order in the coming years. The origins of the historic deal can be traced to the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPSEP) Agreement concluded by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore in the fall of 2005. Three years later, eight other Pacific-Rim countries began discussions with the members of TPSEP in hopes of concluding a broader deal on trade and investment in the region. After some delay, the 12 participating nations reached agreement on October 5, 2015 resulting in an historic and wide-ranging agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. In 2017 the United States withdrew from the TPP giving rise to speculation that the Agreement would collapse. However, in the Spring of 2017 the remaining 11 members of the TPP decided to revive the Agreement. Those efforts proved successful and in January 2018 states announced that they had reached a new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The CPTPP incorporates the original TPP with suspension of a limited number of provisions. Similar to the TPP and other mega-regional trade deals, state parties to the CPTPP have pledged to reduce or eliminate tariffs on a wide range of goods and services. Such commitments exist in chapters pertaining to textiles, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, competition, state-owned enterprises and small- and medium-sized enterprises. The ambitious pact also attempts to establish closer relationships between the Pacific-Rim parties by promoting regulatory coherence and the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade and investment. CPTPP chapters on competitiveness, customs administration and trade facilitation, services, investment, regulatory coherence and e-commerce attempt to reduce the burdens placed on businesses operating within the agreement. Nonetheless, state parties to this new arrangement have also suspended a number of provisions that were included in the TPP. Suspended provisions are located in a variety of CPTPP chapters, including those related to trade facilitation, investment, services, public procurement, intellectual property rights (IPR), environment and transparency.

As with the TPP, the CPTPP contains 30 chapters covering topics such as:

• Cooperation and Capacity Building
• Customs Administration and Trade Facilitation
• Competitiveness and Business Facilitation
• Dispute Settlement
• Development
• E-Commerce
• Environment
• Financial Services
• Government Procurement
• Investment
• Intellectual Property
• Labour
• National Treatment & Market Access for Goods
• Regulatory Coherence
• Rules of Origin
• SPS Measures
• State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies
• TBT Measures
• Textile and Apparel Goods
• Trade in Services
• Telecommunications

As countries work toward signing the CPTPP in the next few weeks, there are continued debates in numerous media outlets about the impacts (both positive and negative) that CPTPP will have on certain industry sectors across the trans-pacific region. Moreover, some issues have yet to be settled. Canada, for example, has been particularly concerned about protecting its cultural industries and Vietnam has expressed concerns about some of the labour protection provisions in the CPTPP. Separate side letters between member states on a number of issues are expected. New Zealand has, for example, signed side letters with five other CPTPP parties to exclude compulsory ISDS provisions from their agreement. Texts of those side letters is available through the MFAT website at: www.mfat.govt.nz/cptpp.

The co-editors invite you to contribute to this special edition with unpublished or previously published articles, conference papers, research papers and case studies addressing the CPTPP and corresponding issues raised by any of its chapters. For example the following topics raise interesting points for discussion:

• The convergence or divergence of international trade and/or investment law trends in the CPTPP.
• The balance struck within a TPP chapter between measures designed to facilitate international trade and/or investment and a host state's sovereign right to regulate as a means of achieving legitimate policy objectives, including the protection of human rights, health, the environment, public morals, cultural institutions, the financial sector or intellectual property.
• Intended and unintended legal consequences of the CPTPP's "rules of origin" provisions on local labour markets.
• The facilitation or impairment of market access for trade in services under the CPTPP.
• The treatment of technical barriers to trade, such as labeling and manufacturing standards, or food safety measures under the CPTPP versus WTO agreements and other mega-regional trade treaties.
• Supply chain risks and opportunities created by the CPTPP for multi-national organizations and/or member states and state-owned enterprises.
• The impact of the CPTPP on transformative/disruptive technologies or business models and related domestic law.
• Reconciling member states' rights and obligations under the CPTPP with their other international trade and/or investment law treaty obligations.
• Changes made to various aspects of the investment chapter.
• Procedural and remedial advantages and disadvantages of the TPP's dispute resolution provisions as compared to other international trade and/or investment law treaties.

Proposals or papers should be submitted directly to the co-editors:

Contact details here. Please CC info@transnational-dispute-management.com when submitting your materials.

Feel free to circulate this call for papers amongst friends, colleagues and other people who you think may have an interest in this topic.

Proposals should be sent to the editors. Publication is expected in 2018.

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