China-backed Asia trade deal pushed to 2019 amid delays

Bloomberg

Asian nations gave up hopes of completing a 16-nation trade bloc this year, with Chinese and Australian officials now looking to finalise the deal in 2019.
Singapore, which is chairing the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year, had pushed for a substantial conclusion to the agreement this year. Known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, the trade deal would cover almost half the world’s population.
“It will take a little bit longer to ensure that we get the type of substantial, meaningful, commercially meaningful market access decisions that Australia expects in a trade agreement,” Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told reporters in Singapore.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang echoed those sentiments in a speech in Singapore on Tuesday, saying he hoped the RCEP talks would be completed next year. China has pushed to diversify its export markets amid a trade war with US President Donald Trump, adding fresh urgency to the negotiations.
“With the headwind of trade protectionism, free trade is facing some difficulties,” Li said.
RCEP is often seen as a rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a vast regional pact once led by the US that Trump withdrew from early in his presidency. Together with the Belt and Road Initiative to build investment and trade links with countries along the old Silk Road to Europe, the pact is a key element in China’s efforts to seize the geopolitical advantage following what many in the region see as a US retreat.
Beijing’s struggles to finalise the trade bloc may illustrate worries in the region about becoming too economically dependent on China.
India has dragged its feet as RCEP doesn’t provide for free movement of skilled labour, a key concern for New Delhi given its large pool of tech workers, even as it opens its market to a clutch of nations known for their manufacturing prowess. It is facing pressure from member nations — including Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea — to conclude talks.
The stalemate appears unlikely to be unwound any time soon as RCEP member countries like Australia, India and Indonesia go into elections
next year. That raises questions about the longer-term prospects for RCEP, which began life as an effort by the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations to bring its individual trade deals with China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand under one umbrella.
Unlike the TPP — initially conceived in part as a way for Asia-Pacific nations to lessen economic dependence on China — which goes beyond traditional trade issues to address intellectual property, labour rights and state-owned enterprises, RCEP is more limited with a focus on goods and services. It faces the added challenge of bridging the interests of developed economies such
as Australia and Japan with emerging markets like Cambodia and Laos.
“We of course have to resolve the different goods and
services offers, investment offers, between each nation at a bilateral level, as well as the coordinated text in key areas,” Birmingham said.