What are the facts? At the end of a four-day summit in Hanoi, Fifteen Asian countries agreed Sunday, November 15 to conclude the largest free trade agreement in the world, covering nearly a third of the world’s population and representing 30% of the world’s gross domestic product.
This agreement provides for the elimination of 90% of customs tariffs between member countries and common rules for intellectual property. “I am happy that after eight years of complex negotiations, we can officially end the negotiations of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) today”, said Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, whose country holds the rotating presidency of Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). The agreement brings together the ten members of ASEAN: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the largest economies of the region: China, Japan, South Korea, but also New Zealand and Australia. India, which participated in the negotiations, has not joined the agreement, but the door remains open to membership.
What is the significance of this agreement? First, it reflects the rise of Asia in the world economy and the development of capitalism in this region with its integration into capitalist globalization; it testifies to what K. Marx analyzed as a law of capitalist development. Thus, in a speech delivered to the Brussels Democratic Association on January 7, 1848, he declared: ”To sum up, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action...Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker... in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point.” Life confirmed the hypotheses of K. Marx as large capitalist free trade groups have been formed in America, in the Pacific (trans-Pacific treaty (1) and in Europe, particularly with the European Union. The constitution of vast capitalist economic groups therefore characterizes the evolution of world capitalism. There are several dozen of these blocks on all continents. These unions are part of the economic struggle between monopolies and states. The constitution of a vast unit in Asia and the Pacific forms part of this process of development of capitalism and imperialism. It is also part of the trade war that the US is unilaterally imposing on China, a war that slows down trade and weighs on all the economies closely linked to the development of capitalism in China. While this agreement gives China a greater role in the leadership that it intends to strengthen in the region, it symmetrically opens up new opportunities for monopoly capitalism in the Chinese economy. The concentration of capital, the merging of industrial and financial capital... as described by Lenin in imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism (2) with in particular: “[the]formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves” are indeed the first causes of the constitution of these capitalist groups. These groups must be fought in their capitalist nature; they require the workers of the countries concerned to lead the class struggle against their exploiters and also to develop an internationalist practice of this class struggle.
(1) Initially, this multilateral free trade treaty was supposed to include 12 stakeholders: United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia and New Zealand. China's participation was not expected. With 800 million inhabitants and 40% of world GDP, the TPP was to become the largest free trade area on Earth. But once in the White House, D. Trump signed an executive order disengaging the United States from this agreement. After the withdrawal of its largest participant, the other members did not abandon the TPP which, of course, had less economic weight. Renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, the treaty without a few initial clauses entered into force in 2018. To date, it has been ratified by seven countries: Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam.
(2) V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Les Éditions du Progrès, USSR, 1967.