Trade Regionalism in the Asia-Pacific: Developments and Future Challenges

Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement—the ASEAN FTA—was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN+1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of “Pivot to Asia”, was broadly agreed in...