After signing a new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with 14 other Southeast Asian and Pacific countries, Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping eyes joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in order to build the long-proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
On November 15, 15 Asia-Pacific countries signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Communist Chinese Premier Li Keqiang touted the RCEP as “a victory of multilateralism and free trade.” When ratified, the RCEP is set to be the world’s largest economic integration scheme, with its 15 countries accounting for 2.2 billion people — just over 28% of the world’s population — and a total of $26.2 billion in Gross Domestic Product.
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The agreement was signed by the heads of states of the 15 nations at the 37th Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. The 15 RCEP signatory countries include: Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand, along with the communist Marxist-Leninist governments of Laos, Vietnam, and China.
In fact, seven of those RCEP-countries — Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam — are also signatories of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), formally known as just the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP.
The other CPTPP signatory countries that are not in the RCEP include: Canada, Chile, Mexico, and Peru.
Keeping a 2016 campaign promise, President Donald Trump formally withdrew U.S. from the TPP shortly after taking office in January 2017.
The biggest different between the new RCEP and the TPP/ now-CPTPP is the inclusion of China, originally excluded from the TPP.
Originally, President Barack Obama attempted to sell the TPP to the American people as a kind of economic “free trade” alliance intended to curb the rising influence of China in the Asia Pacific region; otherwise China would dominate and determine the rules on trade for the region — or so the argument went.
For example, on May 8, 2015, while addressing employees of Nike, Inc. headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, about trade, then-President Obama said, “the Trans-Pacific Partnership that we’re working on, it’s the biggest trade deal that we’re working on right now — [it] has to do with the Asia Pacific Region.”
In his case for U.S. participation in the TPP, Obama elaborated:
We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy. And we should do it today, while our economy is in the position of global strength. Because if we don’t write the rules for trade around the world – guess what – China will. And they’ll write those rules in a way that gives Chinese workers and Chinese businesses the upper hand.
However, despite President Obama’s apparent concern for Communist China’s rising influence, the truth is that the TPP was always intended to eventually include China and even Russia, through the establishment of an even larger and all-encompassing economic union known as the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).
FTAAP
The eventual creation of this proposed-FTAAP is actually the stated long-term objective of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). APEC is a massive inter-governmental forum founded in 1989 and based-out of Singapore, whose 21-member nations include not only all the signatory nations of both the RCEP and CPTPP agreements, but also the United States, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Hong Kong, Papau New Guinea, and the Russian Federation.
In addition to APEC, the very preamble of the TPP admits that its goal is to expand and establish the FTAAP. On page two of the two-page TPP preamble, the final point reads:
EXPAND their partnership by encouraging the accession of other States or separate customs territories in order to further enhance regional economic integration and create the foundation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific.
Furthermore, chapter 30 of the TPP agreement, entitled “Final Provisions,” opens TPP membership to APEC member states. Article 30.4 of chapter 30 of the TPP reads:
Article 30.4: Accession
1. This Agreement is open to accession by:(a) any State or separate customs territory that is a member of APEC…
President Obama knew about the FTAAP. As president, he specifically mentioned and was committed to building the FTAAP.
In the his first year in office, President Obama, along with the other leaders of APEC, including then-Chinese Communist dictator Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin, jointly declared:
We will continue to explore building blocks towards a possible Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) in the future.
Midway through his second term, on November 11, 2014, President Obama praised Communist China and Chinese Communist dictator Xi Jinping for their contributions to building the FTAAP. Speaking at the APEC Plenary Session One, Obama remarked:
And finally, I want to commend China for focusing this year on what APEC can do to contribute to the realization of the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific. The goal of FTAAP was announced in 2006 and, as leaders noted, the many regional initiatives will contribute to the eventual realization. We see our engagement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a contribution towards that effort. I look forward to the day when all of our economies can be linked together in a high-standard, 21st century agreement. And I think that the work and the efforts of President Xi in setting this agenda here today will help facilitate that.
And this didn’t stop with Obama and his U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.
Page 31 of the 2020 Trade Policy Agenda and 2019 Annual Report, authored by the U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Robert E. Lighthizer (a member of the pro-one world government Council on Foreign Relations), mentions the FTAAP and how the U.S. is continuing to advance it; the report reads:
Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP): The United States continued to advocate for work on topics designed to foster free and fair trade in the region, including addressing issues presented by state-owned enterprises and advancing high-standard labor provisions. Work related to the FTAAP has the potential to improve the ability of all APEC economies to participate in bilateral or other free trade agreements that achieve high standards by removing barriers and unfair practices while embracing more open markets.
China Eyes Membership in CPTPP
On November 19, 2020, just four days after the signing of the RCEP agreement in Vietnam, Reuters reported that China is open to the idea of joining the CPTPP, according to China’s ministry of commerce. Reuters reported that “Gao Feng, ministry spokesman, made the comments at a news conference in Beijing.”
The Chinese news agency Xinhua, likewise reported:
China will assume an open and positive attitude towards the idea of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Thursday.
China welcomes any open, inclusive, and transparent regional free trade agreement that can help foster economic globalization and regional economic integration. It must, however, adhere to the principles of the World Trade Organization, MOC spokesperson Gao Feng told a press briefing.
On November 21, 2020, the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese dictator Xi said he “will give positive consideration to the idea” of joining the CPTPP.
The New American has long since been sounding the alarm bells about the TPP being used to economically merge the U.S. with Communist China in order to build the FTAAP (see here, here, here, and here).
Despite much of the disinformation disseminated at the time by President Obama, and even from so-called conservative media outlets such as Fox News and Wall Street Journal, about the purported need for the United States to enter the TPP in order to stop China, it’s now apparent that was all a lie. The intent: to trick or beguile the American people and Congress into surrendering their national sovereignty under the guise of preventing the very thing that the agreement was ultimately intended to facilitate: increasing China’s regional and global influence. The RCEP, CPTPP, and proposed FTAAP amount to nothing more than creating a new world order with China and Russia, or globalism with Chinese characteristics.
Ultimately, whether or not China specifically joins the CPTPP is immaterial. The endgame for both the RCEP and CPTPP is to build the FTAAP — whether by merging the two agreements together or as an outgrowth of one of the two.
In fact, on Friday, November 19, 2020, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said, “Japan will aspire for the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific through the early conclusion of the RCEP agreement and the steady implementation and expansion of the CPTPP as next year’s chair.”
If Joe Biden is ultimately sworn in as president on January 20, 2021, he will almost certainly do everything in his power to undo Trump’s withdrawal of the TPP by officially getting the United States into the CPTPP. Globalists are already salivating at the prospect of Biden rejoining the CPTPP.
Keisuke Hanyuda, the CEO of Owls Consulting Group Inc. and a former Japanese trade ministry official, was recently quoted in the Japan Times as saying: “As economic integration in Asia involving China progresses under RCEP, it can motivate and add pressure to Biden into thinking that the United States needs to return to the TPP.”
However, should Biden become president and choose to join either the CPTPP and/or RCEP, Congress would have to approve. The current Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), under which U.S. lawmakers unconstitutional bequeath the executive branch with “fast track” authority to negotiate trade schemes, is set to expire on July 1, 2021.
