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Timeline for massive China-backed trade deal slips
SINGAPORE, Nov 14, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The completion of the world’s largest
trade deal — backed by Beijing and excluding the United States — has been
pushed back to next year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Tuesday, after
Asia-Pacific trade ministers failed to agree key terms at a Singapore summit.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), covering half the
world’s population, is billed as an antidote to President Donald Trump’s
“America First” agenda, which has seen tariffs imposed on almost half of all
Chinese imports to the US — and retaliatory levies by Beijing.
China hoped to have the meat of the deal — whose members include Japan,
India and Southeast Asian nations — done by the end of this year as ballast
to US tariffs and increasingly pugnacious rhetoric on trade.
But the timetable has slipped, with sticking points over free access to
markets remaining — and a raft of general elections early next year likely
to further hamper its progress.
Speaking in Singapore, Premier Li said he hoped RCEP would be signed and
implemented next year.
“It (RCEP) is going to deliver real benefits to the people of our region,”
he said, without giving a date.
China was now the standard bearer of global free trade, he added, with the
16-member RCEP deal at the heart of its strategy.
“It’s going to send a message to the international community that we stand
by free trade… with rising protectionism and strains on free trade, we need
to advance the RCEP negotiations,” Li said, in comments delivered at the
ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
He conceded the Chinese economy was facing “challenges” in the wake of the
trade war with the US, but insisted strong fundamentals meant radical
intervention was not the remedy.
“Despite downward pressures we will not resort to massive stimulus,” Li
said.
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– ‘Significant progress’ –
Trade diplomats said negotiations will run deep into 2019.
“We made significant progress,” New Zealand minister of state for trade
and export growth Damien O’Connor told reporters after talks late Monday, but
added delegates were “hopefully ready for conclusion next year”.
India’s concerns over opening its markets to competition, in particular
from Chinese firms, has been a key obstacle in the several years of
negotiations.
But New Delhi’s delegation welcomed the incremental steps towards
establishing the trade agreement.
“The future lies in RCEP,” Indian trade minister Suresh Prabhu told
reporters, but urged a patient approach to talks to ensure “every country
will benefit from it”.
Several general elections scheduled early next year — including in India,
Thailand and Indonesia — have complicated the timeframe of a deal that will
open markets in countries accounting for about a third of the world’s GDP.
The deal was given extra impetus after Trump pulled the US out of the
rival Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TPP is still alive even without Washington, but RCEP is now the
world’s biggest trade deal.
However, the Beijing-backed pact is much less ambitious than the TPP in
areas such as employment and environmental protection.
The ASEAN summit, which formally opens Tuesday afternoon, will cover
trade, maritime disputes and the Rohingya crisis.
Frictions over Myanmar’s treatment of the Muslim minority simmered
Tuesday.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad broke ASEAN’s normally cordial
protocols by telling reporters Aung San Suu Kyi was “defending the
indefensible” by not speaking up for the Rohingya — hundreds of thousands of
whom were driven into Bangladesh in a bloody purge last year.
Shortly afterwards Mahathir stood next to Suu Kyi for a stony-faced
‘family’ photo.
Amnesty International on Monday stripped Suu Kyi of its highest honour
over her response to the Rohingya crisis.
Other world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mike
Pence — Trump’s number two — are also in Singapore for talks foreshadowed
by the China-US trade war and its ripple effect on global economies,
particularly in Asia.
Pence is expected to keep pressure on Beijing over its growing aggression
in the South China Sea while seeking support for Washington’s approach to the
denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
BSS/AFP/HR/1025