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The pact’s resurrection is one of the more unlikely events in a year of surprises. After all, America accounted for almost two-thirds of the original bloc’s $28trn in annual output. Access to the vast American market was what made other members readier to open up their own. Moreover, Mr Trump’s retreat had sent a dismal message about the prospects of the open, rules-based order that America had underwritten. The Asia-Pacific region had benefited more than any from that order in recent decades—yet Mr Trump was declaring multilateralism dead and signalling an intention to raise barriers to trade. Soon afterwards, he ordered South Korea to renegotiate its free-trade agreement with America. And this week he imposed punitive tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels, aimed at South Korean and Chinese manufacturers.
In spite of this forbidding backdrop, the dauntless 11—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam—have regrouped. In Vietnam in November their leaders sketched out an agreement on the core features of a revised deal. The pact’s name has changed, to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), in case the original had tripped too lightly off the tongue. But remarkably few (22, to be precise) of the original provisions have been frozen. The victims are mainly strictures insisted on by America. For instance, copyright has been reduced from 70 to 50 years. And special protections for biologics, a booming category of drugs, have been suspended.
