What does the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have to do with free trade?

How the TPP will affect European companies

Dr Patrick Ziltener, Associate Professor, University of Zurich

160, Section 3, Renai Road, Taiwan City / 台北市仁愛路三段160號  MAP

Many consider the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a real game changer in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. As a matter of fact, the TPP is more occupied with setting rules than with liberalizing trade, which makes a realistic assessment of its economic impact a difficult task. Our guest speaker has just concluded a comprehensive data-study on the discrimination potential of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) against Swiss companies on behalf of Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) and the Swiss Federal Government's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). He has been invited to Taipei as a Taiwan Fellow 2016. In his presentation at this Special Lunch he will approach the topic on the basis of a trade policy matrix and present a novel method to identify the TPPA-induced changes, with a focus on competitive disadvantages that TPP implies for companies from countries that are not party to the agreement, such as companies from Europe and Taiwan.

Patrick Ziltener studied economics and sociology in Basel, Berlin and Zurich. He holds a PhD from the University of Zurich. He has spent more than a dozen years conducting extensive research on various economics and trade-related matters in Asia. He was formerly a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne, Germany. He was involved in the Swiss National Science Foundation's (SNSF) 2003-05 research project on regional integration in East Asia and has conducted research in Indonesia (ASEAN Secretariat), Singapore (APEC Secretariat) and other ASEAN countries. He was a visiting researcher at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). From 2006-2009, he worked for SECO as a Senior Advisor for Economic Relations with East Asia and Secretary of the Free Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (FTEPA) Switzerland-Japan negotiations. Since 2015 he has been Associate Professor at the University of Zurich. Last book publication: Regionale Integration in Ostasien. Eine Untersuchung der historischen und gegenwartigen Inter-aktionsweisen einer Weltregion (VS Verlag fur Sozial-wissen-schaften).

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Contact: Fiona Lee / Tel 2740-0236 ext.215 / fiona.lee@ecct.com.tw / www.ecct.com.tw