The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a free trade agreement promoting economic integration among the fifteen East Asian and Pacific nations of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. RCEP was signed on November 15 2020 and should enter into force 60 days after six ASEAN1 member states and three non-ASEAN member states have ratified the Agreement. 

The impact of RCEP on international trade is expected to be significant. RCEP members account for about 30 per cent of global GDP. Trade in goods among RCEP members was close to US$ 2.5 trillion in 2019, or about 13 per cent of global trade. RCEP should be instrumental to advance trade relationships between the economies whose bilateral trade relationships were not previously regulated by any trade agreement. The RCEP agreement aims to further advance regional trade by providing members with better market access conditions largely by reducing tariffs and implementing trade facilitation measures, therefore bringing RCEP countries a step closer to becoming a regional trading bloc. 

This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the RCEP agreement: tariff concessions. While the RCEP agreement encompasses other areas of cooperation, tariff concessions are a very important element. RCEP's tariff concessions should ultimately eliminate tariffs on more than 90 per cent of goods traded within the bloc. The RCEP framework allows for significant discretionality in the form of postponements (the implementation period is 20 years), exemptions for sensitive and strategic sectors and discrimination across members.