EnThe ministers of the 11 countries that are still party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership have agreed to bring the agreement into force “expeditiously”. An initial report is due at the next APEC meeting in November, suggesting significant progress before 2018 seems unlikely. That will involve adapting the agreement’s terms to allow it to come into force without the U.S. as well as a secondary process to allow new countries to join the agreement. The former is a technicality based on proportion of total GDP of the original deal’s partners.
The latter may be needed to keep Vietnam and Malaysia in the deal, Associated Press reports. Panjiva analysis shows they could get access to 68% of the total trade in the TPP group by signing up to RCEP (which excludes Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru). RCEP in aggregate is 1.8 times the size of TPP (mostly due to China, which is 36.2% of the RCEP) and is a simpler, tariff-focussed deal. The RCEP process is not without its problems, however, with India concerned about loss of revenue from tariffs and its competitive position vs. China according to Reuters.
Source: Panjiva
