The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will come into force on January 1. The world’s largest trade deal was signed last year by ten ASEAN countries plus their largest trading partners China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. It will officially kick off after a minimum of six ASEAN members and three non-ASEAN signatories ratify the agreement.
So far, ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have ratified the deal. Meanwhile, non-ASEAN partners that have ratified were China and Japan. The recent ratification by Australia and New Zealand marked a milestone for the pact to enter into force on January 1, 2022.
RCEP covers a market of 2.2 billion people and $26.2 trillion of global economic output. That represents about a third of the global population and GDP. It will be larger than other trading blocs such as the European Union and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Analysts have said that it would take years to materialize modest economic benefits from RCEP. However, the agreement was widely seen as a geopolitical win for China amid waning US influence in the Asia Pacific.
