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Inside Out | Why Britain joining the CPTPP is clearly not about the economy
- ‘Global Britain’ needs new friends and trading partners as the economic harm from Brexit becomes clear
- The Asia-Pacific bloc, by holding Britain’s feet to the fire, can burnish its liberal credentials and define membership barriers that an unreformed China would find impossible to surmount
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Six years ago, Donald Trump blundered away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after describing it as “a rape of our country”. These days, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is more kindly disposed to the trade bloc.
After three years of negotiations, Sunak is on the cusp of winning Britain membership of this 11-country trade group centred on the Asia-Pacific, which has rebadged itself as the CPTPP – the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Britain’s Department for International Trade has said its membership will “boost the CPTPP’s economic clout” and put Britain “at the heart of a dynamic group of countries, as the world economy increasingly centres on the Pacific region”.
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Whether Britain will in fact boost the CPTPP’s clout, and how soon, is open to debate. Regardless of this orphan from Europe, the CPTPP and Asia-Pacific economies are dynamic and set for strong growth.
But Britain, having bludgeoned its way out of the European Union in 2020 after a brutal Brexit debate that divided the country, is in desperate need of new friends and trading partners.
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In terms of political optics back at home, where the economic harm arising from severing itself from the EU is becoming clear, this is the kind of win that Sunak cannot afford to miss, however meagre the economic pickings. This is the “Global Britain” Brexiteers dreamed about.
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