LONDON — Some 11,000 miles from London, Britain’s trade chief Kemi Badenoch will make history this weekend by signing Britain’s membership of one of the world’s largest trading blocs.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP) is a real tongue-twister – but it’s also Britain’s best ‘Plan B’ alternative to a faltering World Trade Organization, says Crawford Falconer, the Whitehall official at the heart of the UK Post stands -Brexit trade strategy.
As Badenoch penned a much-touted deal this Sunday in Auckland, New Zealand, that promises to boost Britain’s GDP by no more than 0.08 percent, the biggest winner is unlikely to be the UK, but another highly independent country Island nation on the other side of the world.
For Japan, Britain’s accession to the CPTPP marks a diplomatic triumph sought for many years, the culmination of a hard-fought effort to realign Western thought to its own strategic goals in the Indo-Pacific – most notably strengthening economic and military defenses against the US’s growing power of China .
Britain’s admission to the CPTPP is “a huge win,” Yukiko Okano, deputy press secretary for Japan’s foreign minister, told POLITICO.
Since Britain first applied to join the Pacific bloc in February 2021, Japan has formally led the UK’s accession process under the CPTPP, guiding London’s bid through the diplomatic hurdles created as part of a concerted effort to protect against Beijing’s supremacy are required in the region.
As negotiations intensified over the past decade, Tokyo’s diplomats and politicians have traveled the world to pull out all the stops to get Britain’s bid through.
When former British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss threatened to jeopardize their recently signed trade deal with the EU – unsettling CPTPP partners and casting doubt on Britain’s reliability – Japanese officials worked tirelessly to persuade Britain to curb its excesses, and key CPTPP allies – notably Australia, New Zealand and Canada – recovered to press their own way over the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Act.
The bill, which would have unilaterally suspended parts of Britain’s 2020 trade and cooperation agreement with Brussels, was finally dropped in February with the signing of the Windsor Framework Agreement. For Great Britain, the deal to join the CPTPP followed within a few weeks.
The China Question
This weekend’s signing ceremony in Auckland makes Britain the first new CPTPP member since the 2018 agreement between 11 Pacific nations.
The US was originally slated to be the 12th founding member, but then-presidential candidate Donald Trump condemned the draft treaty as “raping our country” in June 2016 before withdrawing the US from talks three days after he was sworn into office.
Today, tensions over potential new members continue to simmer beneath the surface. China and Taiwan both submitted applications to join the compact in late 2021, and their competing candidatures must be addressed by the bloc’s existing members, even as geopolitical tensions surrounding Taiwan’s independence from mainland China mount.
Crawford Falconer said this is Britain’s best ‘Plan B’ alternative to a stalled World Trade Organization | Niklas Halle’nN/AFP via Getty Images
Tokyo and its closest allies in the bloc, like Australia and Canada, want London to provide some sort of counterbalance to Beijing’s economic and political hold over other Asian members like Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia, said a second Japanese diplomat, who spoke anonymously since they weren’t were authorized to speak to the media. Most expect the UK to reject China’s request outright.
“They want Britain to play the role of a gatekeeper,” agreed Henry Gao, a law professor and China expert at Singapore Management University.
A break with protocol
UK accession has not progressed as quickly as some ministers had hoped. When Truss – then Britain’s Trade Secretary – first told her officials to submit Britain’s application in early 2021, she believed the deal could be in six months to a year, according to the three senior officials who were familiar with their thinking at the time.
“Here we are, two years later than originally planned,” sighed one of them, a former senior British minister involved in the negotiations.
The political chaos that gripped Britain for much of 2022 was of little help as Prime Minister Johnson and then Truss himself were ousted within months.
By that time, a concerned Japan had “almost staged an intervention against the UK,” said a former UK Department of Commerce official, who was also granted anonymity to speak freely. “That was a great piece of Japanese diplomacy.”
Truss and Johnson had both threatened to withdraw from the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiated as part of the original Brexit deal with the EU. In June 2022, Truss introduced the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, thereby enshrining the relevant powers in domestic law.
Japan quickly coordinated a group of concerned CPTPP members who “told the UK to drop the Protocol Act” and comply with international agreements, the former UK trade official quoted above said. “This was a big deal for Japan as it facilitated Britain’s accession to the CPTPP.”
A delegation of Japanese diplomats and trade experts traveled to London in October 2022 for further negotiations. Her visit coincided with Truss’s resignation from Downing Street after a turbulent 45 days in office. They had a clear message for the government of new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: there must be no shying away from an international treaty, agreed the Japanese and former British trade representatives quoted above.
“For the most part, the Japanese assumed they didn’t like the idea of something overriding CPTPP,” said an official at Britain’s Department for Business and Trade.
Tokyo found a close ally in another leading CPTPP member – Canada.
“It was incredibly important to Canada that the UK respect its international agreements,” said a senior Canadian official. Any deal with the UK would “set the benchmark for future accession,” they added, nodding to China’s own bid to join the CPTPP.
In early 2023, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida personally visited Rishi Sunak in London to sign a new defense pact | Pool photo by Jacques Witt via AFP/Getty Images
They noted that a crucial test of joining the Union “is whether an emerging economy respects the international agreements and treaties to which it is party”.
In early 2023, as Japan took over its G7 presidency, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida personally visited Rishi Sunak in London to sign a new defense pact and “jointly address the remaining issues related to the G7.” [U.K.] Joining the CPTPP, Kishida’s own press secretary said at the time.
The Japanese leader then flew directly to Canada, where he and Canadian leader Justin Trudeau raised the UK’s efforts to join the CPTPP and regional issues surrounding China.
The negotiations were very “dragon’s den,” British Trade Minister Badenoch told the Times when she met Japanese Trade Minister Nishimura Yasutoshi at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a few days later. She also met with Canada’s Minister for Trade, Mary Ng, and with delegations from New Zealand – but there was no doubt which country took the lead.
“The Japanese are really aware of the geopolitical implications of the CPTPP given their physical proximity to China and have been extremely supportive of Britain’s bid for membership,” her predecessor Truss told POLITICO this week. “CPTPP is really an essential bulwark against China.”
In private conversations, Truss often expresses her love for Japan and for supporting Tokyo in bringing about British accession to the CPTPP.
A strong signal
For Tokyo, the benefits of British membership of the CPTPP have always been clear.
The deal is “not just a trade deal, but a strategic deal,” Japanese leader Kishida’s press secretary Hikariko Ono told reporters during his trip to London earlier this year.
Britain’s membership “bolsters the Japanese agenda to build political-economic ties with the region, which helps counteract Chinese influence,” noted former British diplomat Simon Fraser, formerly head of the UK Foreign Office and now managing partner of consultancy Flint Global.
“In a geopolitical sense,” Fraser said, Britain’s membership is “a not inconsiderable expression of the Indo-Pacific orientation of Britain’s foreign policy,” set out in London’s own 2021 Defense and Security Strategy — known as the Integrated Review.
When it comes to Taiwan, Britain’s presence in the bloc “complicates China’s calculations,” added the Japanese diplomat quoted above. They said they “hope this will make China more cautious about doing something bad.”
Britain’s accession is “a strong signal,” agreed Peter Ricketts, another former head of the UK Foreign Office and Britain’s first national security adviser between 2010 and 2012.
But Tokyo “should not assume that there will be a huge shift in diplomatic, economic and security efforts to Japan and the Indo-Pacific,” he warned.
“That’s not going to happen given what’s happening in Europe,” Ricketts observed, citing Britain’s continued support for Ukraine to resist Russia’s invasion and Britain’s “limited” resources.
And as Britain’s Labor Party continues to climb in opinion polls ahead of the expected general election in 2024, it’s also far from clear whether the next British government will give Britain’s role in the Indo-Pacific the same focus as repairing the Brexit-battered one UK-EU relationship.
“It is in our global interest to be there [Pacific] “But I don’t want to overstate it and its impact on our economy.”
As CPTPP members in Auckland this week begin reviewing the next bids for their growing club – including one from Beijing – the role of the latest recruit is sure to be crucial.
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2023-07-14 06:15:52
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