As US trade with Asia flourishes, resistance to CPTPP bloc holds firm

American companies have integrated more deeply with Vietnam and other regional partners outside the grouping, undercutting need to join pact

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US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, speaks at a campaign rally outside Detroit, Michigan, on Wednesday. Trade has so far been rarely raised as a campaign issue. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 12:00am, 13 Aug 2024Updated: 1:42am, 13 Aug 2024

In a US presidential election season defined by sharp differences over abortion, gun control, voting rights and other social issues, trade policy has so far got short shrift.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Vice-President Kamala Harris has spent most of the time since President Joe Biden opted out of the race highlighting the controversial comments and positions of Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, nearly all of them involving culture-war issues like reproductive rights.

Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to raise import taxes across the board and substantially more on products from China. Yet it is generally difficult to differentiate between campaign rhetoric from actual intention and particularly risky when it comes to the former American president.

On trade, one significant stance has held: resistance to the trans-Pacific trade bloc from which Trump withdrew the US in one of his first official presidential acts in 2017.

Former US president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday. Trump has vowed to raise import taxes if elected. Photo: AP

Known then as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and later as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) when Japan salvaged the pact and carried it forward without Washington, the bloc is nearing its sixth anniversary since the CPTPP came into effect.

Trade within the 11-country grouping has grown 5.5 per cent between 2018 and 2021. Meanwhile, members that lacked free-trade agreements with one another before the CPTPP saw a further increase of 13.2 per cent in trade, such as Canada with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam, according to a CPTPP report in December.