After more than a decade in the making, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is one small step closer to fruition. A special committee in Japan's Parliament, the Diet, formally approved the deal Nov. 5, clearing the way for the Lower House to debate the agreement Nov. 8. If the Lower House approves the deal, it will move to the Upper House, where lawmakers will have 30 days to deliberate over and vote on the measure. Given Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's strong support for the agreement and his ruling coalition's supermajority in both houses of the Diet, the deal's ratification is all but certain in Japan. The same cannot be said, however, of the TPP's 11 other signatory countries. Once the deal's member countries signed the TPP in February, it came under intense — and, for many signatories, unexpected — scrutiny in the United States.