The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a free trade agreement intended to foster economic cooperation among its states in East Asia and the Pacific Rim.  RCEP was first conceived in 2011 and was negotiated in parallel with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (now the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP).  After the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations in 2017, negotiations for both RCEP and CPTPP accelerated, ultimately resulting in a signed CPTPP in 2018 and RCEP in 2020.  CPTPP came into force in December 2018, and RCEP entered into force in January 2022.

CPTPP currently has eleven parties: Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Peru, Malaysia, Chile, and Brunei Darussalam.  CPTPP is a WTO-plus agreement, covering trade in goods, trade in services, foreign investment, labor mobility, government procurement, intellectual property, labor rights, and protection of the natural environment, as well as special topics such as telecommunications and financial services.

RCEP represents the world’s largest free trade agreement, encompassing approximately 30% of the global population and 30% of the world’s GDP.  In June 2023, the Philippines signed the agreement, becoming the RCEP’s fifteenth member state.  Nine other signatories are members of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), and the remainder currently include China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

The RCEP aims to facilitate trade and investment, streamline regulations, and promote economic cooperation among its member countries. Comprising 20 chapters, the agreement covers a wide spectrum of economic activities including trade in goods, trade in services, foreign investment, and economic and technical cooperation. One of the main goals of the Partnership is to reduce or eliminate customs duties among member states on most categories of goods by approximately 92% over the next twenty years.

Aside from WTO-plus and investment provisions, RCEP includes a mechanism for dispute resolution apart from the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), but that requires consideration of any report of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body.  The system is similar to the DSU, requiring consultations and, if necessary, establishment of a panel to issue a “report” on the dispute, which is in reality a binding decision.

According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), RCEP members are projected to gain $174 billion in real income by 2030 as a direct result of participating in the Partnership, with China, Korea, and Japan expected to benefit the most. Several other major trading states are considering joining RCEP, including India, and CPTPP, including the United Kingdom, which signed an accession agreement in July 2023 and currently awaits ratification.

Although the United States is not a party to either arrangement, it has free trade agreements with some RCEP (Australia, South Korea, and Singapore) and CPTPP members (Australia and Singapore, as well as Canada, Mexico, and Chile).  It also as well as bilateral investment commitments to two CPTPP members Canada and Mexico through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (formerly NAFTA).