"RCEP trade pact heralds dawn of Asian Century", 15 November 2020

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a 15-member Asian trade pact that was first broached nearly a decade ago, was signed and sealed [...] at a virtually-held regional summit.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ten members, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are all included in what will be the world’s largest free trade pact.

[...]

The combined GDP of signatory nations is a whopping US$26.2 trillion and will be bigger than both the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the European Union.  

The RCEP will eliminate as much as 90% of tariffs on imports between signatory nations within 20 years and will establish common rules for e-commerce, trade and intellectual property while shying from any commitments on labor or the environment.

The RCEP is designed to reduce costs and time for companies and traders by allowing them to export their wares to any signatory nation without meeting separate requirements for each country. The deal is expected to come into force by 2021.

[...]

The pact is not only expected to help ASEAN nations to recover next year from the pandemic’s economic devastation, it also symbolically highlights the importance of the region in what some analysts still believe will become known as the “Asian Century.”

[...]