India Can’t Keep Dodging Trade Deals
If Beijing needs to compromise to get regional talks across the finish line, so does New Delhi.
Talk to the guy next to you, Prime Minister.
Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, is not a “competitor” to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (or, as it’s now known after adding the adjectives “comprehensive” and “progressive,” the CPTPP). Yes, the CPTPP very obviously excludes the People’s Republic of China while the RCEP does not. But, unlike the former, the RCEP is a more traditional sort of trade deal, in which tariff cuts on tradeable goods — rather than high standards for labor, environmental and intellectual-property protections — are at the center of the discussion.
That’s part of the reason India is leery of signing it. This week, as leaders of the 16 RCEP nations met in Singapore, India managed to postpone its moment of reckoning: Instead of concluding negotiations by the end of the year as hoped, the leaders agreed that the deal would be signed next year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for an “early conclusion” to the talks, and others said that significant progress had been made. But the truth is that the gulf between India and the other 15 countries in the RCEP remains deep, and it isn’t clear how or if it can be bridged.