This edited volume has taken a long time to complete. The original plan was to publish an edited volume on the potential impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement on Southeast Asia based on papers presented in a series of seminars held at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in 2016. This plan was put on hold following the uncertainties created by the withdrawal of the United States from the TPP in January 2017. The subsequent signing of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2018 convinced us to resuscitate the book project. Our contributors have had to revise their chapters to take into account, as much as possible, the major changes brought about by the new deal.

We are confident that this volume will continue to be important and relevant in light of the plethora of global political and economic challenges that have emerged in recent times, such as the rise of protectionism, the US-China trade war and the Covid-19 pandemic. We hope that this volume will serve as a useful reference to anyone keen to understand the CPTPP—its nature, evolution and impact.

This book project would not have materialized without our contributors. We thank them for their patience and willingness to reconfigure the chapters after the TPP was transformed into CPTPP. At ISEAS, the support of Director Choi Shing Kwok and Senior Advisor Tan Chin Tiong has been invaluable. We would also like to thank Ng Kok Kiong and Sheryl Sin Bing Peng of the Publications Unit for their help in finalizing and publishing this edited volume.

Overview

The appetite for regional economic integration has waxed and waned over time. Since the failure of the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations in 2008, countries in Southeast Asia have continued to show interest in greater regional economic integration. This has manifested in several forms and at several fronts—both intra- and inter-regionally. A key initiative that pre-dates the collapse of the Doha Round is the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which was formally established on 31 December 2015. It remains a key focal point for regional economic integration for ASEAN member countries. Simultaneously, ASEAN countries have also negotiated the free trade agreements (FTAs) with other countries that already have FTAs with the Association's member countries.

A smaller subset of Southeast Asian nations—namely Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore—and eight other countries from the Asia Pacific came together to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Even though the TPP negotiations were successfully conclude and the agreement was signed in February 2016, the United States’ withdrawal from the TPP cast significant doubts on its future. The remaining eleven countries subsequently renegotiated the agreement successfully, resulting in the signing of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in March 2018. To date, seven of the TPP signatory countries have ratified the CPTPP, where it has entered into force. Of the four Southeast Asian nations that have signed the CPTPP, only two countries—Singapore and Vietnam—have ratified the agreement; Brunei and Malaysia have yet to do so at the time of writing.

The CPTPP, in its current form and in its earlier manifestation as the TPP, has been touted as a “twenty-first century trade agreement”—a lofty phrase that conveys the agreement's comprehensiveness and its usefulness as a benchmark for all other subsequent trade deals. Despite this, there is clearly no consensus about the impact of the CPTPP in terms of its costs and benefits. To complicate matters, such calculus—as some have argued—extends beyond economics. The political economy of trade agreements is also not confined to domestic politics.Regional geopolitics matter, too. The ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China exemplifies this. This brings us to the goal of this edited volume.