• East Asian Economic Review
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• 제25권3호
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• pp.233-272
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• 2021

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, signed in November 2020, comes shortly after the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) entered into force and the US-China Trade War escalated. We use a computable general equilibrium model to assess the long-term effects of these three developments on income, trade, economic structure, factor returns and employment across the world, and especially in Asia-Pacific countries. The results suggest that RCEP could generate income gains that will be almost twice as large as those of the CPTPP, and that the two agreements together will largely offset the substantial negative effects of the US-China Trade War for the world as a whole. All three policy developments, but especially RCEP, will deepen East Asian production networks and will raise productivity and increase wages and employment in much of East Asia. At the sectoral level, regional trade in non-durable and durable manufactures will experience the most growth.

• 수완나부미
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.251-268
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• 2022

Over the last few decades, global trade activities showed a significant increase, resulting in a rise of the wider global economic growth. The achievement is partly due to the more integrated global trade system under global trade regime such as World Trade Organization (WTO) that standardized the practice of global trade. On the other hand, it could also be seen that regional trade negotiation became more important part of global trade activity. The trade negotiation itself was pushed and tailored by regional perspective, which indigenized trade agreement. This research aims to analyze the indigenization of ASEAN's trade negotiation model. How has the current trade negotiation model within the region represented indigenous needs and aspirations? This study also offers to revisit the conceptual framework in identifying the trade negotiation model to measure the indigeneity of Southeast Asian automotive industry's policy. This research concludes by explaining the case studies which measure the effect of indigenization to the practice of trade agreement in the region.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• 제24권1호
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• pp.171-207
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• 2020

Purpose - This paper investigates the potential effect of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on trade liberalization among member countries in order to answer key questions in our research on whether the RCEP will be a cornerstone or just collaboration. Furthermore, it aims to measure the likely magnitude of the economic impact it has on its members. Design/methodology - Toward achieving research objectives, we developed a regional CGE model based on the GTAP 9 database. Findings - The simulation results show Korea, Australia, India, and Japan ranked the top countries with an average growth in GDP of 0.38 %, 0.36%, 0.29%, and 0.23%, respectively. Moreover, China and New Zealand followed with a percentage of 0.12% each. The lower economic performing group is the ASEAN group due to a contraction in GDP by 0.13%. Accordingly, there was a positive impact of the RCEP agreement on all member states, as empirically demonstrated. Furthermore, Korea is one of the countries that will benefit most from joining this agreement. Finally, this agreement is important; it has many economic benefits to member states, but it is not a cornerstone. Originality/value - The examination of the quantitative effects of tariff removal among the RCEP's countries is its value. We will address all member countries of the convention simultaneously using a regional CGE model GAMS language, where we employed a Mathematical Programming System for General Equilibrium (MPSGE) to establish a Regional CGE model. This study is directed to policymakers looking at evaluating RCEP agreement.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.65-83
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• 2022

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to evaluate the economic effects of FTAs using the concept of value-added exports. So far, the economic effects of FTAs have been dependent on decrease in import prices due to tariff cuts in importing countries, but the actual tariff reduction need to consider the value added of the exporting countries. Design/methodology - Value-added export refers to the added value created in the exporting country out of total exports. Among value-added exports, direct value-added export is interpreted as the Regional Value Contents (RVC), from which the economic effect of the FTA can be analyzed. A modified GTAP-VA model takes into account RVC in order to estimate accurate effects of FTAs. Findings - By the re-evaluation of the FTA based on the RVC, this paper makes it clear that the economic effects of the existing FTA methodology have the possibility of overestimation. In addition, as a new FTA with a strengthened Rules of Origin (ROO) is being initiated, a negative impact on international trade and GVC utilization may occur. Originality/value - This study introduces the concept of value-added export in analyzing the effects of FTAs. The new analysis methodology of this paper emphasizes the importance of value-added exports. Re-organization of GVCs would change regional trade agreements and empower ROO by weakening existing GVCs and transforming the value chain from global into regional scope.

• 무역학회지
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• 제46권4호
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• pp.39-60
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• 2021

Despite the fast growth and rising importance of digital trade, there still exists no multilateral agreement governing digital trade. Significant differences in policy directions regarding key digital trade issues among the U.S., EU and China are the main stumbling blocks for reaching agreement on the multilateral front. To overcome this deficiency in digital trade rules, there has been active movement among mainly countries in the Asia-Pacific region for rule-making on digital trade. Starting with the CPTPP chapter on E-Commerce in 2018, there has been a series of digital trade rules agreed in bilateral or plurilateral formats, such as the USMCA, USJDTA, DEPA, DEA and RCEP. Korea is currently only member of RCEP, which contains an e-commerce chapter with lower levels of commitment as compared to other digital trade agreements. This paper provides a broad analysis of the recently concluded digital trade agreements, comparing the different coverage of rules, levels of commitment, and rules templates. The analysis aims to provide implications for the desirable direction of rule-making on digital trade and Korea's digital trade strategy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.3-25
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• 2022

East Asia's Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force in 2022 as the world's largest free trade agreement. RCEP was concluded, signed and brought into force in the face of major international uncertainty and is a significant boost to the global trading system. RCEP brings Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand into the same agreement with the ten member ASEAN group at its centre. It keeps markets open and updates trade and investment rules in East Asia, a major centre of global economic activity, at a time of rising protectionism when the WTO itself is under threat. The agreement builds on ASEAN's free trade agreements and strengthens ASEAN centrality. One of the pillars of RCEP is an economic cooperation agenda which has its antecedents in ASEAN's approach to bringing along its least developed members and builds on the experience of capacity building in APEC and technical cooperation under the ASEAN Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. There is an opportunity to create a framework that facilitates deeper economic cooperation that involves experience-sharing, extending RCEP's rules and membership at the same time as strengthening political cooperation. The paper suggests some areas that might be best suited to cooperation - that is confidence and trust building instead of or before negotiation - and discusses how non-members may be engaged and the membership expanded. Options such as multilateralising provisions and becoming a platform for policy convergence and coordinating unilateral reforms are canvassed.

• 무역상무연구
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• 제72권
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• pp.139-160
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• 2016

Using the gravity model, this paper analyzes empirically how the world trade in goods is affected by regional trade agreements(RTAs) which have been spreading rapidly since the mid-1990s. This paper attempt to do the panel data analysis about 174 countries during the period of 1994-2008. These panel data include 157 RTAs. It is meaningful that this paper uses comprehensive data to analyze the net effect of regional trade agreements on the global trade volume. This provides a clue as to the answer to the stumbling block debate raised early in the regional trade agreement. Also, confirming how the participation of the WTO affected the trade volume among the member countries, the WTO-related dummy variables are additionally introduced to this gravity model. And as far as we know, the state system-related variables is first considered in this model. This variable reflects the social and cultural environments of countries as the proxy variable representing the sociocultural homogeneity. In all regressions, joining to the WTO and consistency of the state system have a positive effect on increasing the trade volumes between countries. According to the analysis of RTA trade effects, RTAs, on average, increase the volume of trade within the RTA region by 27%~37%, and decrease the volume of trade between the regional and the non-regional nation by 1.2%~3.4%.Therefore, the net effect of regional trade agreements on the promotion of global welfare is positive. For robustness check, we also introduce the interaction term of the dummy variable which reflects the RTA tightening and the continuous variable which reflects the distance effect. As a result, the RTAs alleviate the trade-decreasing effect which is caused by the distance between the countries.

• 통상정보연구
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.233-260
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• 2013

FTA를 중심으로 하는 다수의 RTA는 미래 세대에 대한 배려, 지속성, 공정성, 형평성 등을 핵심적인 가치로 하는 지속가능한 발전 개념을 내포하고 있는 경우가 점차 증가하고 있고, 자유무역주의 기조의 확산 정착과 지속가능한 발전 간의 조화를 위한 중요한 규범적 도구가 될 수 있을 것으로 기대되고 있다. 따라서 국제사회가 모색하고 있는 새로운 세계경제 질서의 재편 및 확립을 위한 세계경제의 통합과 자유화에 있어서는 그 어느 때보다도 지속가능한 발전개념이 핵심적인 규범 목적과 가치로 주목받고 있다. 반덤핑제도의 주요 초점이 과거에는 덤핑을 규제하기 위한 것이 목적이었으나, 최근에는 반덤핑제도의 남용을 억제하는 것으로 변화되고 있다. 반덤핑제도 운영의 투명성이 무엇보다도 중요하며, 객관적이고 투명한 반덤핑제도의 운영은 행정적 효율성을 제고시켜줄 뿐만 아니라 수출국에 대한 보복 조치와 무역 분쟁을 방지할 수 있기 때문이다. 따라서 국내적 대응방안으로 덤핑수출업체로부터의 국내산업 보호를 위한 정책을 수립하여야 하며, 비교열위산업의 경우 해당부문에 대한 구조조정을 촉진하여야 하고, 산업구조 고도화를 위한 정부의 정책조정이 필요할 것이다.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• 제22권2호
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• pp.177-215
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• 2018

Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and his "America First" trade agenda ignite a second round of interest in mega-free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific. Countries are evaluating alternative trade policy actions in a post-TPP era. Using national real GDP gains estimated by a modified GTAP model to construct "preference ordering" for 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations members and their six regional dialogue partners, this paper comes up with several policy-oriented findings. First, when multilateral agreements are not possible, countries are better off with a regional trading agreement than without one. Second, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is likely to have higher beneficial impacts than the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Third, for dual-track countries, implementing both agreements is better than each separately. Fourth, impacts of open regionalism are likely to be higher than those of a closed and reciprocal one. Going forward, this paper argues that countries should adopt a "multi-track, multi-stage" approach to trade policy.

• 산경연구논집
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.89-97
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• 2018

Purpose - The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) among 16 countries including South Korea, the largest free trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region, will be concluded next year. The participating countries decided to pursue a comprehensive and high -quality agreement, while ensuring flexibility considering development level of each country. In this study, trade structures between nations from 2005 through 2016 were examined to see the impact that this agreement will have on Korea and to come up with effective countermeasures. Research design, data, and methodology - The method of analysis includes the analysis of the trade matrix, which is useful for identifying the dependency of the individual countries on the market in the region and the reciprocal dependency of the member countries on the market, and the index of intensity of trade, which is useful for figuring out the share of trade between the parties in total trade. Results - The results showed that first, the international trade coefficients of Vietnam and Philippines are higher than those of China and Japan. Secondly, the international inducement coefficients between China and Japan were high, and that between Indonesia and Burma were low, indicating that Korea's exports did not have much effect on export increase of these countries. Third, as a result of analyzing Korea's trade intensity, it was found that export intensity and import intensity were greater than 1 in Vietnam and Philippines, which shows that there is a high degree of relational bond with these countries. India and Laos countries still have a low level of relational bond, which indicates that there is room for improvement in economic relations when the agreement is concluded. After the signing of the agreement in the future, more diverse industrial structures should be continuously studied. Conclusions - The analysis of trade matrix, trade structure, trade inducement coefficient and trade intensity between Korea and RCEP participating countries shows that the majority of the countries have the high level of economic relationship with Korea. Korea should drive a harder bargain when negotiating the terms of the RCEP, in comparison with the level of the existing FTA agreement excluding Japan.