TPPA and the Implication to Malaysia

Basically TPPA is a trade agreement involving several countries. Thus, discussion and discourse about many spins around the expected impact of trade received by small countries, especially developing countries like Malaysia. Our former prime minister, Tun Dr.Mahathir Mohamad has asked our government to consider before deciding to signed the TPPA agreement and think about the national interest first as our priority. It is because of even our country does not sign the agreement, Malaysia still able to grow in international trade since our country's trade increased every year from having per capita income of just U.S. $ 350 (about RM1, 330) increased to U.S. $ 9,000 (about RM34, 200) per capita. Reviewed from the good implication form many perspectives, if Malaysia did not join the TPPA, one of the things that will happen is that Malaysian will loss the market for goods for the small and medium enterprises and also will impact to our local companies that produce palm oil, rubber in the international market, while it is an essential to our nation since the domestic market is limited to 29 million people. Without TPPA, Malaysia will lose access to smart partnership of innovation and new technology with other TPP member countries. Besides, foreign investors from outside such as United States and Canada may be focused on the TPP countries to join them as Vietnam, and Malaysia will eventually isolated from this trade block From my opinion, Malaysia should sign the agreement if it is profitable and beneficial to our country. In the other hand, there are many sources stated that the agreement has too little beneficial interest to the country in view of the fact that there are a number of countries which had decided not to sign the agreement such as Thailand and Indonesia.

In addition, there are many voices around that stated about the bad impact of TPPA trade to our nation which is the rising of medicine price and also the chance of the small farmers in agro-based industries to compete with foreign agriculture products. Rather than that, since Malaysia is known as Islamic country, the community would once again be faced with a changing social and cultural colonization after the process of globalization. This is because when the trade is free without being bound by acts of material used in Malaysia such as Halal then automatically foreign cultures will close to our nation. Besides that, the proposed provisions in TPPA can prohibit our governments from making new laws to give greater protection to workers in Malaysia compared with the existing provisions. It happens through the prohibition to our government to give a training and recruitment of Malaysians citizens in foreign corporations. TPPA also can prevent the government from strengthening labor laws, such as to increase the minimum wage or introduce new legislation for workers as new health and safety regulations or other benefits and entitlements. A TPPA negotiation seems to be difficult as the Malaysian conditions to protect the interests of the nation and the people. Malaysia has no problems with the scope of the TPPA agreement the concerns is when there is a new element is introduced as competition, labor, environment, government procurement and intellectual property rights (IPR).