India Loses Faith in Trade

Till fairly recently, it looked like two massive new agreements would compete to define the future of world trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, backed by the U.S., would try to move the global trade architecture toward new norms, with harmonized regulations at its center. Meanwhile, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, backed by China, would drastically reduce remaining tariffs across a swathe of Asia and push the existing model of trade and manufacturing as far as it could go.

The TPP is now history, thanks to Donald Trump. But the RCEP can't exactly declare victory yet. The 16 countries involved -- China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and much of Southeast Asia -- have discovered a familiar hurdle in their path: India.