The failure of talks in Maui last weeks to reach final agreement on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement raises new, if slim, hope that this corporate wishlist may not be delivered after all. Friday was the last chance to get a deal that could be pushed through the US Congress before 2016, when Presidential campaign politics might disrupt everything. If that happened, and the new President opposed the deal it might never happen.

Although there were a bunch of issues that prevented a final deal, the biggest one was the demand for new protection measures for US pharmaceuticals (typical of what are absurdly still called Free Trade Agreements), and the biggest single obstacle was the attitude of an obscure legislative chamber, the Australian Senate. This piece in Inside Story gives some of the background.