The inaugural CPTPP General Review

To that end, members have now embarked on the first-ever CPTPP General Review, intended to ensure that the disciplines contained in the agreement "remain relevant to the trade and investment issues and challenges confronting the Parties."² Under the leadership of New Zealand as chair of the CPTPP Commission for 2023, ministers agreed on the Terms of Reference for the review last November.³ It will now fall to 2024 chair Canada to take the process forward.

The Terms of Reference respond to the remarkable evolution of the trading environment over the last decade or so. The bulk of the current rules were finalized in 2015, in the CPTPP’s predecessor Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Since then, economies have had to grapple with trade slowdowns, a lingering pandemic, wars (of both the military and trade kinds), climate change, accelerating digital transformation, and unprecedented supply chain challenges. These have all prompted new thinking on trade policy settings.

Terms of Reference: Stress-testing core provisions and modernizing others

Ministers have agreed that the Review should focus on ensuring that the agreement continues to support core trade and investment opportunities, global value chains and living standards, including by making sure the rules and institutional arrangements function optimally. At least some CPTPP members will also hope to use the Review to tackle the unfinished business of market access for those handful of sectors that fell short of comprehensive tariff elimination in the first go-around (not quite the "gold standard" promised on the tin).

Topical and emerging issues are also to be considered. Ministers have committed to "demonstrating leadership in emerging digital and green economy issues"; to "upholding labour rights and improving working conditions"; and to "exploring opportunities to promote inclusive outcomes, including for Indigenous Peoples". The Review will also look at ways the agreement can ensure supply chains remain resilient and how the CPTPP can complement the rules-based multilateral trading system, "including as a means for responding to economic coercion".