The alphabet soup of trade deals will be in focus in the next few days. The forthcoming APEC Summit may see progress on the ‘Free Trade Area of Asia Pacific’ in light of the apparent U.S. decision to put TPP to one side. This may take the form of a China-led combination of the RCEP and TPP (ex U.S.) members. While only a study at this stage, ‘RCEP+TPP ex U.S.’ members accounted for 31% of China’s exports over the past 12 months. China has a reason to promote trade – exports to that group dropped 10% in September on a year earlier and have fallen in 18 of the past 19 months.

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