What's the big deal?

摘要

Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (tpp), an am-bitious trade agreement linking America, Japan and ten other countries-together accounting for 40% of global GDP-have missed so many deadlines that one more may not seem to matter. But talks are reaching a point of no return. Without an agreement in the next few weeks there will not be enough time to complete the tpp before America is embroiled in a presidential election campaign, and progress will be impossible until 2017. American diplomats, however, insist the deal is on track. They sometimes seem to be trying to convince themselves that an aim that has become a linchpin of American strategy is still achievable. Their nervousness has been heightened by the recent embarrassment over the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (aiib), a new, China-led multilateral development-finance institution. A number of close American allies have applied to become founding shareholders, ignoring American entreaties to shun it as a threat to global standards. After that setback, America needs the tpp to succeed more than ever. It may well do so. But the most recent round of tpp talks, in Hawaii, appears to have ended with some important disagreements still unresolved.