No inspiration

First, among the “old” topics—namely agriculture and NAMA—the concessions are tangible, but probably not as ambitious as many would have expected. For the most sensitive agricultural products like sugar, rice, and dairy the parties did not agree to abolish quotas, but rather raise them slowly year by year.

For example, Japan agreed to increase the quota for rice from Australia from 6,000 tons to 8,400 tons over a period of 13 years. For NAMA, the levels of applied most-favored nation tariffs among TPP members were already low – 4.0% simple and 2.7% weighted for 2014.

Furthermore, more than half of the trade relations among TPP partners are covered by preferential trade arrangements, where the simple applied tariff is 1.7% and the applied tariff is less than 1%. In the final agreement, the TPP partners agreed to further reduce or even eliminate their tariffs on industrial goods... — blogs.adb.org/blog