The New Gold Standard? Empirically Situating the TPP in the Investment Treaty Universe

Abstract

The Transpacific Partnership (TPP) has been labelled a “new, high-standard trade agreement”. But just how “new” and “high” are the standards it sets? To answer that question we combine traditional legal analysis with computational text comparisons situating the TPP in the universe of international investment agreements (IIAs). We find that the TPP investment chapter offers few truly novel features — 82% of its text is taken from prior American treaties. Compared to the majority of IIAs, however, the TPP goes beyond existing practice: it sets high levels of investment protection, explicitly safeguards host state sovereignty and establishes a sophisticated investment arbitration architecture. Nevertheless, the TPP is unlikely to revolutionize the IIA universe. Its innovations are open to circumvention as older treaties, such as NAFTA, remain in force parallel to the TPP. Moreover, as disagreement persists with Europe and BRICS countries, the TPP is unlikely to serve as template for future multilateralization.

Keywords: Transpacific Partnership, TPP, investment, text as data