Health Group Pushes TPP Tobacco "Carve-Out" But Specifics Remain Obscure

The U.S. stance on Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) tobacco market access provisions violates the World Trade Organization (WTO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and threatens the global effort to reduce tobacco use, said Executive Director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Georges Benjamin in an Oct. 2 letter to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman. The U.S. should endorse the Malaysian proposal put forth in August for a tobacco carve-out in the TPP framework, said Benjamin.

“We encourage the USTR to work with Malaysia and others to support a proposal that provides the greatest protection against future acts of subversion,” said Benjamin. “The TPP agreement provides us with the opportunity to lead the world in reducing the burden of tobacco use-related deaths and diseases here and abroad, and we urge the administration to ensure that the strongest possible public health measures are included in the trade agreement.” The APHA letter also criticized the administration for back-tracking on a previously strict tobacco market access proposal.

A number of other health groups submitted a Sept. 11 letter, urging similar proposal changes (see 13091221). Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, reiterated those criticisms in a letter sent to the USTR the following day, on Sept. 12 (see 13091327). “Anti-tobacco groups have long been calling for a carve-out of tobacco products from trade agreements," said Trade Policy Analyst at Cato Institute and panelist Simon Lester at a Sept. 20 CATO panel on the TPP. "Last year USTR seemed willing to push for a mildly strong proposal in this regard…but it would not have been a complete carve-out of tobacco in trade rules. For one thing, it would only apply to regulation, not legislation.”

The Malaysian government has not offered substantive proposals, however, said Lester. The carve-out needs to address both domestic policy and broader trade rules in different contexts, he argued. “The Malaysians come out and said 'we would like a complete carve-out actually.' It’s still a little unclear to me what they mean by that -- a carve-out from everything, including the investment rules, including tariffs, I’m not sure about that. But they want a much stronger carve-out.”