Trade ministers agree to reach basic agreement on RCEP by end 2018

Trade ministers from the 16 Asian economies negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal released a joint statement promising to reach a basic agreement by the end of 2018, the Associated Press reported.

The Tokyo meeting, which was attended by ministers from Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the ASEAN countries, was co-chaired by Japanese trade minister Hiroshige Seko and Singapore trade minister Chan Chun Sing. In a joint statement the ministers said that agreement on the RCEP was vital “in view of the current global trade environment, which faces serious risks from unilateral trade actions and reactions, as well as their debilitating implications on the multilateral trading system”, the South China Morning Post reported.

The meeting comes as US President Donald Trump imposes tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, hitting Asian economies like Japan and India hard. Trump has also taken aim at China and looks set to ramp up tariffs on the country. According to the Financial Times, the affected countries are responding with a range of retaliatory tariffs on American products.

The agreements made at the Tokyo meeting were an implicit rebuke to this rising protectionism. Bloomberg reported Minister Seko as saying that as “protectionism concerns increase globally, it’s important that the Asian region flies the flag of free trade”. Minister Chan was also quoted as saying that the “great challenges to the global trading system” currently served as “added impetus… to try and achieve a substantive conclusion to the RCEP process”.

However, strong areas of disagreement remain in the path of a deal. The Nikkei Asian Review reported that these differences include China and India’s wariness of trade liberalisation, e-commerce, intellectual property protection, and the movement of labour.