Several major obstacles still in the way of achieving a TPP

IT was always unduly optimistic to have assumed that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks in Hawaii would end in a done deal. The obstacles - access to agricultural markets, the car trade, extended protection for drugmakers, longer intellectual property protection for copyright, workers' rights, and uniform environmental standards - were not going to be overcome easily. So at the weekend, it was announced that the meeting had failed to reach a final agreement. Talks would go on.

One of the major sticking points seems to have been the decision by the United States to withdraw its offer of access to its sugar, dairy and meat markets. The American sugar market, and its agriculture generally, is one of the most cossetted sectors of its economy. For instance, Hawaiian sugar producers have been on corporate welfare for decades and would have all gone out of business if the US market had been opened to Philippine sugar producers. As well, American farmers get huge subsidies because it suits the political class in Washington.

There is even a subsidy that pays farmers NOT to produce, as a means to sustaining high prices for certain commodities. And it is always the promise of continued - or better yet, new and bigger - subsidies that helps get local politicians elected every time. The intellectual property protection provisions reek of rent-seeking, if leaked documents are any guide. It looks as if the US is trying to get everyone to adopt its flawed copyright law in its entirety. For instance, it would force signatories to enact laws that would ensure that regional coding in digital products that allow price discrimination be upheld.