ASEAN leads push for world’s second largest FTA

Trade and Economic Ministers from ASEAN, New Zealand and Australia exchange greetings at their annual Consultations

The new kid on the trade negotiation block is RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. This is an initiative by ASEAN to develop a new trade agreement between the ten countries of ASEAN and the partners with which they’ve already signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs): Australia/New Zealand, China, India, Japan, and Korea.

RCEP would be a super-sized FTA. It seeks to create an integrated market covering over 3 billion people with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of over US$17 trillion. On current growth trajectories, RCEP will be bigger than the NAFTA (currently the world’s largest integrated market) between the United States, Canada and Mexico with combined GDP of almost US$18 trillion. For the complete article, please read Ambassador Taylor's blog.