# _Temporary Entry of Business Persons (Chapter 12)_

The TPP, like some previous PTAs, covers the temporary entry of business persons.<sup>8</sup> It covers not only business visitors, i.e. individuals who do not make direct sales or supply goods or services themselves, but also other categories of natural persons who do. Chapter 12 defines business persons as someone “who is engaged in trade in goods, the supply of services or the conduct of investment activities.” It covers business visitors, service sale persons, installers and servicers, contractual service suppliers, independent professionals, professionals and technicians, and other types of professionals. The general provisions of the chapter focus on enhancing transparency, with regard to both the general policy regime and individual applications, as well as on encouraging cooperation between TPP countries. The substance of the chapter lies in Annex 12A, where TPP Parties (except the United States) have listed country-specific reciprocal commitments on access for each other’s business persons. In some cases, countries such as Canada, made a number of preferential commitments, e.g. waiver of economic needs tests for business persons and their spouses seeking temporary entry. These preferences went beyond the GATS and some PTA commitments.

The TPP commitments specify the conditions and limitations for entry and temporary stay, including length of stay for each category of business persons specified by the Party. The United States did not make commitments on additional visas for temporary entry, and only agreed to measures on regulatory transparency and predictability. According to the USTR, these rules would not require any change in U.S. immigration laws or regulations, and dispute settlement for this chapter is limited to very specific circumstances. Other TPP parties, however, have made additional access commitments on the temporary entry of business persons, including on length of stay and types of occupations. For example, Australia provides categories defining "business visitors" and spells out the conditions and limitations for each category such as "service sellers" who are permitted an initial stay of 6 months up to a maximum of 12 months.

# **III. SERVICES TRADE POLICY AND COMMITMENTS: DATA AND MEASUREMENT**

Our goal is to compare the market openness agreed in the TPP with three other benchmarks: Doha offers, bilateral and plurilateral agreements, and applied MFN policy. The approach taken is similar to that in Borchert, Gootiiz, and Mattoo (2011) which compared Doha offers with applied policy. We define the scope of the comparison and the approach to quantification on the basis of the World Bank Services Trade Restrictions Database, the most comprehensive source of information on applied policies in services. The updated Database covers key services sectors of 12 TPP countries. We use the same methodology to measure the commitments in each negotiating fora.<sup>9</sup> The applied policy information is from a survey conducted in 2008 and updated for some of

> 8 Some of the previous PTAs examined, namely the NAFTA, the US- Singapore, the US- Chile, Canada-Peru FTAs contain a chapter on temporary entry of business persons, while other FTAs such as the US-Australia, US-Peru FTAs do not have such chapters.

> 9 A detailed description of the World Bank Services Trade Restrictions Database—including details on the data collection process, the policy measures covered and the questionnaire used in the data collection—is provided at http://iresearch.worldbank.org/servicetrade.  The global policy patterns of services trade policy emerging from the Database are presented in Borchert, Gootiiz and Mattoo (2014).  We updated the applied policy information for

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