For Asia, post-Cold War globalization meant an increase in regional trade interdependency, particularly with China, while maintaining a constant pace of trade links with the European Union and the United States. While dependencies on China increased, those on the European Union and the United States decreased. ASEAN - the Association of South East Asian Nations - has been one of the catalysts for growing regional cooperation. Integration, however, did not follow. To answer the need for more coordination and market access, the Trans-Pacific Partnership was conceived in 2006 by Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, and Brunei, out of the foreseeable failure of the WTO Doha round. The United States became officially involved in 2009, after the Doha round collapsed.
The TPP is designed to increase trade in Asia but it is also a response to growing Chinese economic ties in one of the most economically vibrant regions of the world. While speculation that China may join negotiations has bounced around in the media, Obama clarified the relationship between the TPP and China in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in April 2015. He said that if the "U.S. doesn't enact a free-trade deal with Asia, then China will write the rules in that region". The United States wants to create a framework across the Pacific that will become the reference point for any future big regional trade liberalization initiatives.
In this sense, the TPP truly became a grouping of global relevance in 2013, when Japan joined negotiations. Tokyo's decision followed Sino-Japanese diplomatic tensions over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku island chain in 2012, and it came after Japan lost the title of world's second largest economy to China at the end of 2010. It has also been presented as a component of Abenomics. The TPP negotiations on trade liberalization represent for the Japanese government an opportunity to use external pressures to implement reforms in important domestic sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and finance. From a strategic viewpoint, the TPP represents a new level of cooperation with the United States, at a moment when tensions may rise further with China, taking into account the very different positions of the two countries in their developmental history and in East Asia's balance of power.
The incentives for the other countries considering to join the Pacific partnership revolve around the eased access to the U.S. market as a supplement to China's, at a time when, after the financial crisis, the United States is experiencing a more robust recovery than is occurring elsewhere in the world. At the same time, the countries in the region seem to share the common strategic prerogative that while it is good to maintain economic ties with China, they need to have strong security ties with the United States. And TPP, through the large set of items being negotiated, is creating the bridge for a new level of coordination between Washington and its partners. A similar dynamic is at play with TTIP for the EU-U.S. relationship.
It is not by chance that both TPP and TTIP became "serious plans" in the very same year. They share an ambitious agenda, involving more than just trading goods. The pacts refer to more structural issues, such as services and investment. The currently negotiated partnerships - covering the Atlantic and the Pacific - are in fact bringing inter-regional integration to a new level, aiming to set a higher bar for all countries interested in doing business with the partners belonging to the club. They add political ingredients to economic interdependencies, making improvements in security coordination possible in the future.
