An article in the International Herald Tribune (14 February 2011) describes the TPP – which involves the Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam (and possibly Japan).  The article describes the possible impact of such a pact on Japan – a 0.5 % growth rate.  An interesting question is how the collection of countries, spatially distributed and diverse in their capabilities, as well as their GDPs, may impact each other.  How might the global supply chain be impacted by the signing of the TPP ? Will it enable manufacturing to be moved from China to some of the countries in the TPP ? Should Japan join, knowing that that would require opening up its agricultural markets ?