After more than six years of negotiations, more than a dozen countries in Asia Pacific are now aiming to sign what would be the world’s largest trade agreement in 2020. The deal, called Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP, involves all 10 countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc and five of its major trading partners: Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Together, the 15 countries make up close to one-third of the world population and global gross domestic product, according to a Reuters report. That’s larger than other regional trading blocs such as the European Union and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. The mega-deal started with 16 countries but India decided not to join the trade pact over concerns that it would hurt the South Asian country’s domestic producers.
Those six other countries — Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — already have standalone free trade agreements with ASEAN. Coming together under RCEP would boost commerce across the group by lowering tariffs, standardizing customs rules and procedures, and widening market access especially among countries that don’t have existing trade deals. In 2017, however, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the TPP and slapped punitive tariffs on several U.S. trading partners for what he said were unfair trade practices. In particular, the U.S.-China trade war has hurt many Asian exporters by reducing demand for their goods and slowing down growth. The urgency to conclude RCEP increased after all that.
