The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a twelve nation’s trade agreement that covers 40 percent of world economy. The twelve parties of TPP are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam. Cutting tariff and simplifying regulations to deepen economic ties between the signatories were the major aims of the trade agreement. It possibly could create a new single market with the current signatories like the European Union. The agreement was generally seen as a counter to China’s economic might in Asia as the world’s second largest economy is particularly excluded from the signatories.
On 23th January, the US president, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order for officially moving back the country from the TPP as there is a common concern that trade liberalization has harmed jobs in the USA and the TPP would increase competition among the workers in the TPP signed countries. After rolling back of the USA, the TPP is known as ‘TPP minus one’.
The end of the TPP might an end to any hope for a US pivot in Asia and weakened the US grounds in Asia. Moreover, the US-India-Japan cooperation is considered a security cooperation to tackle China. The pivot was formed to resist Chinese rising in power in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Contrarily, China is now trying to break the pivot and to overcome its economic difficulties by re-sorting its geo-politics.
However, Australia is now leading a push to salvage the trade agreement by adding China to fill the USA’s place. Meanwhile, Japan thinks TPP without USA a meaningless deal. Singapore, one of the biggest potential losers from TPP minus one, along with other like-minded signatories is now pushing for the ratification of TPP even without the U.S. on board.
In the meantime, RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) is now thinking as an alternative of TPP. RCEP is the 16-members economic group consists of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and 6 other nations including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. The RCEP members are now contributing nearly one third of the global GDP. The RECP would be an economic bloc with a population of 3.4 billion and expected trade volume of over $17 trillion. The future of RCEP is not predicted because it still faces major obstacles as parties of the deal has no common ground over cuts on tariffs on goods and other important areas on trade including intellectual property rights. Furthermore, RCEP faces different challenges with the inclusion of India and Japan, both of which have hostile relation and have no any free trade agreement with China, one of the major role players in the world economy.  The Chinese inclusion will make both the TPP and RCEP negotiations more difficult as both sides are more or less breaking new ground. Thus, both the deals bring the world economy in a new complex situation. Nobody knows what exactly would happen in future. It is possible that US policy could change over time on this as it has done on other trade deals also.
However, the end of TPP and the rising of RCEP may be an ample opportunity for Bangladesh. Interestingly, TPP minus one would be beneficial for Bangladesh as some of its provisions are not in the country's interest. Especially in case of Vietnam, a signatory of the TPP and a major competitor of Bangladesh, was supposed to enjoy zero-duty benefits among the signatories including the USA, is one of the top export partners of Bangladesh.  But now, things might be quite different and would be favored Bangladesh.
In the new world dynamics, rather heavily depending on the US, Bangladesh needs to secure its own multilateral approach on vital economic and political issues for achieving common interests and advancing economic integration. In this perspective, Bangladesh needs to strengthen the focus on Look East Policy and to remove its conservative shell to cope up the changing reality particularly in foreign trade.
After all, the US TPP withdrawal does not reflect the absolute benefits of Bangladesh. It depends on upcoming trade deals or integration in the changing world dynamics. However, Bangladesh should carefully observe the developments on TPP and RECP as well as other upcoming multilateral and bilateral trade deals. Bangladesh needs to explore opportunities in all the TPP member countries to boost its trade bilaterally. Bangladeshi producers need to improve their product competitiveness as well as standards to compete in the world markets.
Vision-2021 is in progress in Bangladesh and this will take Bangladesh to a Middle Income Country by 2021 and developed one by 2041. If Bangladesh graduates from LDCs, then it cannot continue with a duty-free-quota-free market access for long. Bangladesh needs to find its own way to be competitive by ensuring compliances and increasing efficiency in its own ground. In the concern, the trade bodies of Bangladesh need to play active role.

The writer is an Assistant Secretary (Planning and Research) of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), the apex trade body of Bangladesh. He may be contacted through [email protected].