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Applause, applause: The representatives of 15 nations and the Asean General Secretary at the virtual signing of the RCEP agreement
Photo:
Vietnam News Agency (VNA) / AP
The organizers of the virtual free trade summit in Hanoi apparently copied the signature ceremony from Donald Trump: As soon as the 15 heads of government and ministers from Asia and Oceania have signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), they should put the folder with the signature in the webcam hold - similar to how the still-US President likes to celebrate.
One after the other they sign the two sheets of paper in front of them: the gentlemen in Tokyo, Canberra or Beijing, the ladies in Wellington or Seoul.
Each time they hold the camera, they are applauded by the other participants in the video conference.
You have agreed on big things.
At least on paper.
Also thanks to Donald Trump.
15 countries, from Australia to China, Japan and South Korea to Vietnam, agreed on Sunday on the largest trade agreement in the history of the Asia-Pacific region.
2.2 billion people live in the new trading bloc.
They produce more than 30 percent of global economic output - and before the corona crisis they accounted for 29 percent of global trade.
Soon the new free trade area could be as big as the EU single market.
Larger than the US, Mexico and Canada economies, which are linked by NAFTA's successor USMCA.
And while the US is outside, China is in the middle.
The rulers in Beijing celebrate RCEP as a triumph.
Although it was not they who initiated the negotiations eight years ago, but the Southeast Asian ASEAN states.
But it is the first free trade agreement China has entered into with Japan and South Korea, the other two major economies in the region.
And on top of that, the communist People's Republic also agrees on common rules with raw material suppliers like Australia.
All of this is happening in the midst of the Covid pandemic, regardless of historical tensions and current political conflicts.
"China is taking advantage of the vacuum that the US has left."
Jürgen Matthes, Institute of German Economy
In addition, the heads of government in Tokyo, Seoul and Canberra are central allies of the USA;
partly they house troops of the United States.
But they could not refuse this contract: high technology from Japan, cars from Korea, coal and ore from Australia - hardly anyone buys more of these than China, the superpower of the eastern hemisphere.
The agreement is nowhere near as comprehensive as similar international trade agreements.
Beijing's state media ignore it.
The "China Daily" quotes Prime Minister Li Keqiang on its title - the RCEP declared a "historic victory for multilateralism and free trade".
And the US-critical propaganda paper "Global Times" even recognizes in RCEP evidence that the "USA is increasingly marginalized in Asia."
Under Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, the United States forged a trans-Pacific trade agreement: with a number of Asian-Oceanic states and without rival China.
But Trump canceled the TPP contract on the first day of his term in office.
Many trade barriers to agriculture remain in place
"China is using the vacuum that the USA has left in the Asia-Pacific region," says Jürgen Matthes
,
head of the International Economic System and Business Cycle at the Institute of German Economy in Cologne.
“With the agreement, the country will expand its economic influence.
And with it his political influence in the region. «All of this happens in the middle of a pandemic - which many countries in the Far East are apparently more under control than those in the West, where the second or third wave is raging.
However, the economic progress made by this agreement is manageable.
Many of the member countries were already linked to one another through individual free trade agreements - for example, the Southeast Asian Asean states with one another or as an Asean block with China.
RCEP is now standardizing these different regulations.
"RCEP is nowhere near as ambitious as Western trade agreements are usually," says Mikko Huotari, director of the China think tank Merics in Berlin.
For example, around 90 percent of the tariffs are to be abolished within the new Asian free trade zone - with CPTPP, the remnant of TPP after the US exit, it was 100 percent.
Many trade barriers to agriculture and services remain.
And there is hardly any mention of environmental, labor or human rights standards in the more than 500-page long agreement.
After all, the so-called rules of origin are being harmonized and made bureaucratic.
That means: A manufacturer can export his product to all other member countries with just one document as soon as the RCEP comes into force.
There is also progress in cross-border investments and the protection of intellectual property, says Deborah Elms, head of the Asian Trade Center in Singapore.
"It is a miracle that these 15 so different states have reached an agreement at all."
After all, some of the signatory states are at odds with each other: China and Australia, for example, whose dispute over the origins of the coronavirus has escalated.
"In the field of economic policy, these countries are sending the clear signal: We can and want to work together," says Merics researcher Huotari.
"That sets a counterpoint to a scenario in which security-political tensions would lead to unbundling in the economy as well."
The agreement could pose a threat to the European and North American export industries.
"It is a problem for all companies in non-member countries that want to export to Asia," says trade researcher Elms.
Because the old trade barriers remain for their products.
"The message from RCEP is: If you want access to the growth markets in Asia, you should produce in Asia."
"The only way out is to move even more from Germany with its production."
Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, Director of the Duisburg CAR Center Automotive Research
The German automobile expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer warns of competitive disadvantages for local vehicle manufacturers.
The agreement gives Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia as well as Japanese and South Korean suppliers important access to the Chinese car market, writes the director of the Duisburg-based CAR Center Automotive Research to SPIEGEL on request.
"The only way out is to move more from Germany with production and to build up more productions in Asia."
Daniel Caspary, chairman of the CDU / CSU group and the ASEAN delegation in the European Parliament, sees the RCEP agreement as "a great danger for Europe." The US and the United States have exactly the kind of cooperation that China is now planning with the other participating states The EU once aspired to the TTIP agreement. "Now the Chinese have gotten ahead of us," said Caspary.
The EU must now consistently conclude further trade agreements, ratify the Mercosur treaty and, with future US President Joe Biden, manage a “common transatlantic agenda” for a strategy towards China.
However, Biden showed little enthusiasm for trade contracts during the election campaign.
But not everyone thinks that the danger for Europe is so great: "I don't see that the EU would have fallen fundamentally behind because of this agreement," says China expert Huotari.
"I would counter this perception that EU trade policy has achieved huge successes in Asia." According to Huotari, the agreements that Brussels recently concluded with Japan and Vietnam go much further than RCEP.
Even if their signing wasn't celebrated as pompously.
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