The Lewis Karesh Trans Pacific Partnership Negotiation Records, dating from 2005 to 2015, document the professional work of Lewis Karesh, a senior U.S. trade official who served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Labor between 2005 and 2021. The records consist of draft chapters, annotated proposals, negotiation notes, correspondence, labor law analyses, meeting agendas, internal U.S. government (USG) documents, and handwritten notes created during the negotiation of two significant U.S. trade initiatives, the Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) was signed between the two countries on June 30, 2007, and entered into force in 2012. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement was a proposed trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States). The final proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed on February 4, 2016, by the United States but was not ratified; in 2017, the United States withdrew from the Agreement. Materials include labor chapter drafts, proposed text, procedural guarantees, institutional arrangements, labor consistency plans, and reports on labor law compliance. Many documents contain Karesh’s annotations, handwritten notes, and internal commentary, providing insight into the negotiation process, the internal US coordination on these negotiations, and labor policy positions. Most of the collection is about the TPP negotiations, including detailed documentation of negotiation rounds held in Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru, and the United States. The collection reflects international labor standards, U.S. trade policy, the development of labor chapters in free trade agreements, and the internal workings of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) during the negotiation of large multilateral agreements. Records include labor rights negotiations, drafted and revised over multiple rounds, as well as the United States' approach to labor obligations in trade agreements. The collection has three Series.