It’s worse than that. He’s dead Jim!

As TPP Grinds To A Halt, Asian Countries Start Focusing On Rival Trade Agreement RCE

by Glyn Moody, Tech Dirt

Tue, Sep 1st 2015 3:28am

Techdirt has written dozens of stories about the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). That’s largely because it seemed to be coming to a conclusion, after many years of negotiations, and so it was important to capture the last-minute twists and turns — and the dirty deals — as they happened. But as we reported a few weeks ago, that final breakthrough and completion never happened. Instead, we had the “Maui meltdown”, when a whole bunch of old and new problems raised their heads, with the result that TPP may have missed a key deadline that means it won’t be happening soon, if ever. That may have seemed an extravagant claim, but it is a sentiment that is gradually beginning to spread among commentators in Asia.

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Techdirt introduced the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) back in June, pointing out that it could end up even worse than TPP. But while TPP is at a standstill, RCEP seems to be moving forwards

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The biggest difference between TPP and RCEP is that China is part of the latter, but not of the former, while for the US, it’s the other way around. China therefore has a big incentive to make RCEP happen quickly, and seems to be grasping the opportunity opened up by TPP’s latest problems.

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RCEP has a big advantage in that it is not trying to define an ambitious set of new trading rules, as TPP is, but instead is merely attempting to harmonize existing trade agreements among RCEP’s 16 nations, which also include another major economy absent from TPP — India.