{"id":806,"date":"2024-02-08T00:13:03","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T07:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/?p=806"},"modified":"2024-02-08T00:15:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T07:15:10","slug":"update-on-the-rcep-and-cptpp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/update-on-the-rcep-and-cptpp\/","title":{"rendered":"Update on the RCEP and CPTPP"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t

By Kelsey McGillis<\/strong><\/em>
Law Student Editor
&
Aaron Fellmeth<\/strong><\/em>
Faculty Editor<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t

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. \u00a0RCEP 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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 CPTPP came into force in December 2018, and RCEP entered into force in January 2022.<\/p>

CPTPP currently has eleven parties: Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Peru, Malaysia, Chile, and Brunei Darussalam.\u00a0 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.<\/p>

RCEP represents the world\u2019s largest free trade agreement, encompassing approximately 30% of the global population and 30% of the world\u2019s GDP. \u00a0In June 2023, the Philippines signed the agreement, becoming the RCEP\u2019s fifteenth member state.\u00a0 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.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

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\u2019s Dispute Settlement Body.\u00a0 The system is similar to the DSU, requiring consultations and, if necessary, establishment of a panel to issue a \u201creport\u201d on the dispute, which is in reality a binding decision.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

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).\u00a0 It also as well as bilateral investment commitments to two CPTPP members Canada and Mexico through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (formerly NAFTA).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kelsey McGillisLaw Student Editor&Aaron FellmethFaculty Editor 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. \u00a0RCEP was first conceived in 2011 and was negotiated in parallel with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (now the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}