Jika Congress dan Rakyat Amerika Tidak Faham Bagaimana Ahli Parlimen Dan Rakyat Malaysia Mahu Faham TPPA? Satu Penjelasan Mudah

Presiden Obama mahu TPPA ini dicapai oleh 12 Negara termasuk Singapura, Malaysia dan Brunei. Kejayaan TPPA adalah kepuasan politik Obama.

TPPA adalah idea economists-political economists untuk free trade. Majoriti ahli politik dan rakyat tidak faham apa itu TPPA.

WZWH posting ini untuk beri penjelasan mudah supaya ahli politik dan rakyat Malaysia faham apa itu TPPA.

Mula-mula kita dengar dulu pendapat Krugman pakar ekonomi dunia...

I’ve described myself as a lukewarm opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership; although I don’t share the intense dislike of many progressives, I’ve seen it as an agreement not really so much about trade as about strengthening intellectual property monopolies and corporate clout in dispute settlement — both arguably bad things, not good, even from an efficiency standpoint. But the White House is telling me that the agreement just reached is significantly different from what we were hearing before, and the angry reaction of industry and Republicans seems to confirm that.

What I know so far: pharma is mad because the extension of property rights in biologics is much shorter than it wanted, tobacco is mad because it has been carved out of the dispute settlement deal, and Rs in general are mad because the labor protection stuff is stronger than expected. All of these are good things from my point of view. I’ll need to do much more homework once the details are clearer.

But it’s interesting that what we’re seeing so far is a harsh backlash from the right against these improvements. I find myself thinking of Grossman and Helpman’s work on the political economy of free trade agreements, in which they conclude, based on a highly stylized but nonetheless interesting model of special interest politics, that

An FTA is most likely to politically viable exactly when it would be socially harmful.

The TPP looks better than it did, which infuriates much of Congress.

Terjemahan:

Saya telah diterangkan diri saya sebagai lawan suam Perkongsian Trans-Pasifik; walaupun saya tidak berkongsi suka yang berasal dari banyak progresif, saya telah melihat ia sebagai perjanjian tidak benar-benar banyak mengenai perdagangan kerana kira-kira mengukuhkan monopoli harta intelek dan pengaruh korporat dalam penyelesaian pertikaian - kedua-dua perkara yang boleh dikatakan tidak baik, tidak baik, walaupun dari sudut pandang kecekapan. Tetapi WH itu memberitahu saya bahawa perjanjian itu hanya mencapai jauh berbeza dari apa yang kita telah mendengar sebelum ini, dan tindak balas marah industri dan Republikan seolah-olah mengesahkan bahawa.

Apa yang saya tahu setakat ini: pharma gila kerana pemberian hak harta di biologi adalah lebih pendek daripada ia mahu, tembakau gila kerana ia telah diukir daripada perjanjian penyelesaian pertikaian, dan Rs secara umum adalah gila kerana barangan perlindungan buruh lebih kuat daripada yang dijangkakan. Semua ini adalah perkara-perkara yang baik dari pandangan saya. Saya perlu melakukan kerja rumah lebih sekali butiran adalah lebih jelas.

Tetapi ia adalah menarik bahawa apa yang kita lihat setakat ini adalah tindak balas yang keras dari kanan terhadap pembaikan ini. Saya mendapati diri saya berfikir untuk Grossman dan Helpman ini kerja-kerja ekonomi politik perjanjian perdagangan bebas, di mana mereka membuat kesimpulan, berdasarkan model sangat bergaya tetapi masih menarik politik kepentingan khas, yang

FTA adalah yang paling mungkin untuk berdaya maju dari segi politik dengan tepat apabila ia akan menjadi berbahaya dari segi sosial.

TPP kelihatan lebih baik daripada itu, yang memberangkan banyak Kongres.

Krugman pun cakap mahu study dengan lebih mendalam TPPA ini.

Kita mahu tahu adakah GLC dan syarikat-syarikat Malaysia tidak terjejas, tidak bertentangan dengan Perlembagaan seperti hak-hak dan keistimewaan orang Melayu dan Bumiputera yang dijamin dan keuntungan ekonomi dan sosial buat Malaysia.

Seperti kata KSU MITI, TPPA ini akan diperhalusi lagi oleh kerajaan. Perlu dibentang kepada public dan rakyat dan akhir sekali dibentang di Parlimen untuk dibahaskan samada bersetuju atau tidak bersetuju.

Proses ini mengambil masa lebih 2 tahun.

Kita lihat pula paper kajian Grossman and Helpman - the political economy of free trade agreements, 1993.

ABSTRACT 

Suppose that an opportunity arises for two countries to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA). Will an FTA between these countries be politically viable? And if so, what form will it take? We address these questions using a political-economy framework that emphasizes the interaction between industry special interest groups and an incumbent government. We describe the economic conditions necessary for an FTA to be an equilibrium outcome, both for the case when the agreement must cover all bilateral trade and when a few, politically sensitive sectors can be excluded from the agreement. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

Governments have been meeting frequently of late to discuss the possibility of their forming bilateral or regional trading arrangements. The United States has negotiated bilateral agreements with Israel and Canada, and is pursuing additional accords with Mexico and perhaps Chile. The European Community expanded its membership to include Greece, Portugal, and Spain, and has discussed preferential arrangements with many Central and Eastern Europian countries. Some members of the Association for South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have called for the formation ot a Pacific free trade area. And Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay have banded together to form the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). These various discussions have never been easy, nor have they always been successful. One need only reflect on the recent debates in the United States and Canada over the NAFTA or those in Europe concerning accession to the EC or the lowering of barriers to trade with Eastern Europe to recognize the political hackles raised by prospective trading arrangements. Many political pressures are brought to bear on a government as it contemplates whether to enter into an agreement and what the provisions of such an agreement ought to be. In this paper we attempt to analyze some of these political forces. In particular, we ask: Suppose that an opportunity arises for two countries to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA) among themselves. Will an FTA between these countries be politically viable? And if so, what form will the agreement take? To address these questions, we use the framework of analysis that we developed in Grossman and Helpman (1994). This framework emphasizes the interaction between lobby groups representing industry special interests and an incumbent government. The lobby groups offer policy-contingent campaign contributions to the politicians, who seek to fulfill their own political objectives. In this setting, a country's policy stance reflects the relative political power of its various special interests and also the extent of its government's concern for the plight of the average voter.

6. CONCLUSIONS

We have examined the conditions under which a free trade agreement might emerge as an equilibrium outcome of a negotiation between politically—minded governments. The governments, we imagine, respond to political pressures from industry special interests, but also pay some heed to the plight of the average voter. If an FTA must completely liberalize trade among the partner countries, then a particular government might endorse the agreement in two types of situations. The first arises when the agreement would generate substantial welfare gains for the average voter and adversely affected interest groups fail to achieve even minimal coordination in their efforts to block the accord. The second arises when the agreement would create profit gains for potential exporters to the partner country in excess of the losses that would be suffered by import-competing industries plus the political cost of any welfare harm that the agreement might inflict on the average voter. A free trade agreement requires the assent of both governments. We have found that this outcome is most likely when there is relative balance in the potential trade between the partner countries and when the agreement affords enhanced protection rather than reduced protection to most sectors. With enhanced protection, an exporting industry captures the benefits of the high domestic prices in the partner country. With reduced protection, an import—competing industry sees its domestic pricefall as a result of the duty—free imports from the partner. Whereas reduced protection may involve some trade creation, enhanced protection gives rise only to trade diversion. Thus, the conditions that enhance the viability of a potential agreement also raise the likelihood that the agreement would reduce aggregate social welfare. If some industries can be excluded from an FTA, or can at least be granted long periods of adjustment, then the political prospects for an agreement improve. Each government would wish to exclude from an agreement those sectors whose inclusion would impose on it the greatest political costs. Political costs reflect either the fierce opposition of the import-competing interests or the harm that would be suffered by the average voter in the face of inefficient trade diversion. By excluding some sensitive sectors, a government may be able to diffuse the opposition to an FTA. In a bargaining situation, exclusions will tend to be concentrated in the country that otherwise would block the accord. Our formal analysis of bargaining over industry exclusions focused on a case with only two types of industries in each country. Industries were categorized either as potential exporters or potential import-competitors, with symmetry within each of these groups. It is straightforward to extend the analysis to allow for more asymmetry. Then efficient bargaining would cause exclusions to be granted on the basis of comparative political advantage; that is, industries would be ranked on the basis of the political cost from inclusion to the government of the import-competing country in relation to the political benefit to the government of the exporting country. We conducted all of our analysis under the restrictive (but somewhat realistic) assumption that governments cannot offer direct, treasury-to-treasury, transfer payments as compensation for any political costs associated with an agreement. It would be a simple matter to redo our analysis for the case where such transfers are feasible. The more interesting and difficult question in the political economy of international relations concerns the reasons why compensation payments have played such a limited role in most trade negotiations.