Protectionism and containment in the twenty-first century: Trans-Pacific partnership (TPP)

This paper has been argued on two premises: The first is that protectionism, rather than absent to reflect the free-trade rhetoric attendant globalization has been an evolving process over the decades since the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The most recent manifestation and arguably the most forceful in terms of motivation to avoid domestic adjustment is the TPP agreement. Hence, TPP is presented as a trade-policy imperative of the US in its bid to -rebalance global growth within the existing international institutional frameworks that support its competitive advantage. However, given the geo-economic implications for the wider world, TPP is not likely in its present form and content to be embraced by other TPP members, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and the European Union (EU) which has a proposal of its own in the form of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP). The second premise, and resulting from the first, is that containment of China, either by accident or by design, is a significant aspect of the TPP agreement; it is in keeping with the desire of the US to remain the sole superpower and the dominant force in Asia. But, to the extent that containment is predicated on the US's ability to maintain an American-centric world economic order in an era of much uncertainty and an assertive China, containment is equally unlikely to be successful.