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India's Pullout Deals Setback to Asia-Pacific Nations' Trade Talks

Rob Garver

   Officials in more than a dozen Asian and Pacific nations are struggling
   to move forward with a major regional trade pact, days after India
   announced that it was not willing to sign on.

   The news threw the future of the Regional Comprehensive Economic
   Partnership, a deal seven years in the making and now involving 15
   nations, into serious doubt, even as negotiators insisted that the
   agreement was still viable.

   The pact, known as RCEP, would include the 10 members of the
   Association of Southeast Asian Nations other than India (Malaysia,
   Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Thailand,
   Philippines and Myanmar) as well as China, Japan, South Korea,
   Australiaand New Zealand.

   As trade pacts go, RCEP can be seen as very wide, though perhaps not
   particularly deep. With Indian participation, it would have covered
   countries with more than half of the world's population and about
   one-third of its economic output. However, even with the final details
   of the proposed agreement still under discussion, it is clear that
   compared with other major free trade deals, RCEP is far less ambitious.

   "On paper, it's bigger but generally regarded as a much less ambitious
   agreement than most," said William Reinsch, a senior adviser and holder
   of the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for
   Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It's not going to
   be full free trade. There's going to be lots of exceptions. Lots of
   things are not going to be covered."

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