TPP without the US?

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key has joked that the TPP could be renamed the ‘Trump Pacific Partnership” to try to get the President-elect on board as he argued at Apec that the leaders should not give up on the deal.

Speaking in a panel discussion at the CEOs Summit at Apec in Lima, Key also revealed that New Zealand officials had done new modelling of the economic benefits to New Zealand if it went ahead without the US.

He said that showed it would deliver two thirds of the expected $2.7 billion annual benefit of the full TPP if the US dropped out but the remaining 11 countries implemented the current agreement.

That was because it would still deliver a trade agreement with four of the remaining TPP countries which New Zealand did not already have an agreement with –  Mexico, Japan, Canada, Peru.

Definitely worth it from our point of view. The issue may be that Japan and Canada won’t want to stay in without gaining better access to the US market.

The other possibility is see if you can get China to join TPP.