The 11 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have announced their agreement upon the core elements of a new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The announcement was made yesterday following an meeting of officials in Tokyo. According to a joint statement, ministers of the 11 countries agreed to incorporate certain provisions in the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but also to suspend a number of others.

The 11 countries are: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Among the measures from the original TPP suspended are: Obligations on patent term adjustment, an obligation on the term of protection for copyright and related rights, provisions related to investment agreements and investment authorizations; and the application of investor-state dispute settlement to Minimum Standards of Treatment provisions in the Financial Services Chapter.

It is expected that the CPTPP will be signed in March in Chile.

The new trade agreement will eliminate more than 98 percent of tariffs in a trade zone with a combined GDP of over USD10 trillion.

The original TPP was signed in February 2016, and would have encompassed a marketplace with 800m people and about 40 percent of global gross domestic product, however, in his first executive order as US President, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the TPP.