CPTPP and RCEP: New horizons for Chile and international trade

(Machine translation)

By Loreto Leyton, executive director of Fundación Chilena del Pacífico, an organization supporting Chile's economic insertion in the Pacific Basin.

Beyond any consideration on how and how much the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) relates to the geopolitics of China, the recent signing of this agreement constitutes one of the most significant events for international trade in recent times. It shows the willingness of a group of important countries to deepen and advance the liberalization of global trade and to support multilateralism, which is so necessary for the international order.

Regardless any positive numbers around this agreement, the RCEP has a remarkable symbolic value, especially against the backdrop of growing protectionism. As the Japan Times mentioned in a recent article, the RCEP is the first agreement in which China, Japan and South Korea, that is, the second, third and twelfth largest economies in the world, are members of the same regional economic pact. If these efforts persist, they could become the pillars of a much more cohesive and integrated economic bloc, positioning even further the Asia Pacific region as a world center of economic influence.

Chile should applaud this initiative because it comes to revitalizing an agenda in favor of international trade that came from the doldrums, unfairly undervalued, in the heat of discussions on internal policies that have taken place in various parts of the world, including our country. Let me emphasize that we need to salute it. The development prospects of our country, the odds for sustaining progress in social matters, which will cost more and more money, depend to a large extent on the improvement and deepening of Chile’s insertion strategy in international trade flows (and not only of goods, but also of services, including digital ones).

In this context, I salute the steps that Chile is taking to deepen trade ties with the ASEAN countries. These guidelines, recently addressed in a webinar that the Chile Pacific Foundation carried out together with the Undersecretariat of International Economic Relations (SUBREI) and the Chile-ASEAN Chamber of Foreign Trade, show a strategy focused on diversifying markets with a view to reactivating our economy post (the worst) of the pandemic. And this, of course, brings me to another point: it does not seem very rational that, after almost two years of the legislative process for its approval, the CPTPP continues in the Senate. Chile now needs, as a true and absolute priority, to give the green light for this agreement, which would give us access to more than 3,000 tariff facilities and a market of approximately 500 million inhabitants.

We need to give a signal of our commitment to international trade. Even more in a context of economic crisis from which there are no clear signs of where it is going and at a time when we will need more than ever to benefit from this State policy laid out more than 30 years ago, which has had an indisputable impact on the economic growth of our country. Asia Pacific is a great opportunity that we cannot miss.

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