Deborah Elms, the encyclopedic trade expert behind the Asian Trade Centre and the Talking Trade blog, gave NPF’s International Trade Fellows a briefing on what journalists need to know to track the bewildering number of acronyms of Asian bilateral and multilateral trade deals and frameworks in their multiple stages and incarnations. Herewith, a crib sheet: [Video | Transcript]
WTO: The World Trade Organization has struggled since its 1995 launch. In theory, it would be by far the most efficient mechanism for creating a unified set of global trade rules, but in practice it remains dysfunctional. It still hasn’t written any global rules for digital trade, Elms said. However, “unlike other areas where trade is a dirty word, in Asia, we remain committed to economic integration,” she said. This has prompted the proliferation of overlapping, conflicting, confusing and partially ratified trade agreements among the Asian nations and their trading partners, including …
ASEAN: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been trying to integrate its members’ economies for decades, with varying degrees of success. In theory, as of 2015, ASEAN members should enjoy tariff-free coverage of goods; increasing free flows of services, goods, investment and skilled labor; and freer movement of capital. “Now we’re in 2022, we have not really most of those things, but in typical ASEAN fashion, we have declared it so, and so we now have all of those things, even if practically speaking, we don’t actually have those things,” Elms said. That has prompted the effort to negotiate the …
CPTPP: The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership is the survivor organization of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from which President Trump withdrew the United States on his first week in office. It was resurrected in 2018 by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. It now has eight active members. China wants to join, as does the U.K., Taiwan, Ecuador and probably South Korea. The CPTPP is a comprehensive deal that runs to “600 pages of very small legal text,” dense, ambitious and legally binding, Elms said. It is broad, deep and ambitious, too much so for some countries. But in its fourth year, it has succeeded in eliminating many tariffs, imposing “deep and comprehensive rules on intellectual property rights,” and forging an agreement on electronic commerce, or digital trade involving data and financial services.
RCEP: The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a shorter, earlier version of the CPTPP that came into force in January, 2022, Elms said. It has more exceptions, which makes it more popular with governments seeking to protect domestic special interests, and has more nations as members. However, India recently pulled out, fearing it would be flooded with cheap Chinese goods.
EU deals: The European Union is not a member of the CPTPP or the RCEP, but has been active in negotiating separate bilateral agreements with various Asian nations that promise a simpler way to integrate trade. “Pay attention to what the EU is up to,” Elms advised journalists. Eventually, the EU aims for a free trade agreement with ASEAN, she said. But many Asian nations struggle with the EU’s demands for agreements on sustainability, gender, labor rights and more.
DEPA and DEAs: “We also have a growing number of digital agreements, which, sadly for our alphabet soup discussion, all have different names,” Elms said. Singapore, Indonesia and New Zealand have signed a Digital Economy Partnership Agreement. “Nobody’s really implemented it, but lots of people think it’s very exciting,” she said. There are also Digital Economy Agreements, which are like the DEPA but connected to existing bilateral trade agreements.
IPEF: President Biden rolled out the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity in Tokyo in May, together with the leaders of Japan and India. The framework is the Biden administration’s attempt to make the U.S. relevant in Asian trade again (after its pullout of the TPP) and to counter China’s influence, has 14 members who produce 40% of world GDP. But it’s not clear yet what it will become, beyond a response to the inability of recent U.S. presidents and many other world leaders to sell free trade agreements back home. “We love to say that the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, is a trade agreement to replace U.S. participation in TPP. It is not,” Elms said. But it might become important, she explained.
National Press Foundation’s International Trade Fellowship in Singapore is sponsored by the Hinrich Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
