Probably not much use, but I skimmed the TTP and noted some things along the way.
- Rules of origin decide whether and how much of a product came from a country. Important because stuff gets made over many steps and things like tariff classification may depend on it. Often companies try to cheat on this, so that they can avoid tariffs. The cheating, in some circumstances, is referred to as a spaghetti bowl effect, due to the criss-crossing and subterfuge involved.
- The obvious remark that legal documents themselves often suffer from the spaghetti bowl effect, insofar as they (see annex IV.3 of subchapter 0x0b9) are half-constructed of references to other sections, documents, etc. Reading any legal document (law, treaty, or otherwise) often requires reading every other legal document in existence (in triplicate).
I do wonder whether there are any formal studies done of this, and whether there is some sort of mathematical law describing the length of a document to the length of a document’s references/incorporations. - The amount of effort involved in tracking the origin of goods would seem to suggest that the system is ripe for augmentation with information such as the wage-of-creation-to-poverty-level information that could result in economic pressure for better wages across the globe.
- Emergency measures for a variety of causes including large swings in volume of import/export of food and other goods in cases of famine, ability to protect in cases of health, safety, civil war, etc.
- “For Peru, all distilled spirits with less than 10% alc/vol must have a date of minimum durability.” That’s a footnote which seems to contradict the language it’s noted on (that “[n]o Party may require… a date of minimum durability… except… on account of their packaging… or the addition of perishable ingredients…”). Shrug.
- Can’t require a producer of commercial software to give up their private key as a condition of sale (unless it’s being sold to a government). But: doesn’t stop law enforcement from requiring they decrypt, either.
- Can’t require sale or financial data on pharmaceuticals (and should “endeavor not to require pricing data”) when determining whether drugs can be sold.
- British English: “programme” keeps coming up, which I always read as an invitation to brainwash the writer.
- Some anti-spam stuff (among other consumer protection measures), but we’ll see how much it helps.
- Can’t require source code for importation, except for critical infrastructure.
- “The Parties recognise the importance of a rich and accessible public domain.” And yet, they do nothing to strengthen it. They even use the cliche “fallen into the public domain” instead of something more appropriate like, “lofted up into the public domain, now unfettered by the mortal whims of the fools that created it.”
- Chapter 20, “Environment,” mentions the ozone layer, but nothing about climate change.
Well, that was fun.
