The United Kingdom is about to join the Pacific Trade Pact CPTPP. The admission is to be officially sealed this week, as reported by the British media.
“From a political point of view, this is a really big win for Great Britain, but on the other hand they also have to pay a price,” said trade expert Minako Morita-Jaeger from the University of Sussex to the German Press Agency. The conservative newspaper “Telegraph” celebrated an “important post-Brexit gain”. But Morita-Jaeger warned that membership would not stand up to comparison with the EU.
Pacific as a key political region
The CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) has so far included eleven countries bordering the Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Japan and Chile. According to the expert, the Pacific region is “the engine of growth for the coming decades” and a key political region. “Britain will move from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.”
Morita-Jaeger said that the accession offered hardly any economic advantages for Great Britain, since it already had trade agreements with almost all members. “The economic benefit seems very small. It’s not the level that Britain lost because of the exit from the EU, especially as imports from the EU have fallen sharply.” Rather, London would probably have to make concessions, as was the case with the free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, said the expert. These contracts were sharply criticized by British farmers because, for example, the import of lamb was made much easier.
China is also interested
The Brexit supporters argue that thanks to the exit from the EU, Great Britain is a free trading nation that can conclude contracts independently as “Global Britain”. But the hoped-for free trade agreement with the USA is still a long way off. As a result, joining the CPTPP became a priority for the British government. Bilateral trade with the EU has plummeted since Britain was no longer a member of the EU’s internal market and customs union. The reason for this is new bureaucratic regulations and customs duties in some sectors.
For the Pacific States, too, Britain’s admission would be more of a political success, said Morita-Jaeger. “They need more countries that share common values like democracy and rules-based trade, trade order and free trade,” she said. The Asia-Pacific region should be retained as a free, open market. China has also expressed an interest in joining the CPTPP.
