Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a free trade agreement among fifteen Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Signed on 15 November 2020 and in force from 1 January 2022 for its first ratifying members, it is intended to eliminate roughly ninety percent of tariffs among signatories over twenty years and to set common rules for trade, investment, e-commerce and intellectual property. Its members together account for roughly thirty percent of world population and world GDP, making RCEP the largest trade bloc yet formed and the first free trade agreement to bring China, Japan and South Korea into the same framework.