

TYPES OF TRADE BLOCS FREE
It is also significant in that it is the first free trade agreement between China, Japan, and South Korea, three of the four largest economies in Asia. It represents a collaborative market of more than 2.2 billion people, covering about 30 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), worth $26.2 trillion and nearly a third of the world’s population. The countries comprising 10 ASEAN (Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) with five partner countries (Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand) are the members of this agreement. Over a decade in the making, the RCEP was introduced at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit that took place in Bali (Indonesia) in 2011.

Depending on the level of economic integration, trade blocs can be classified as preferential trading areas, free-trade areas, customs unions, common markets, or economic and monetary unions.The world’s biggest free trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force on January 1, 2022. Trade blocs can be stand-alone agreements between several states (such as the North American Free Trade Agreement) or part of a regional organization (such as the European Union). So, a trading bloc is a formal agreement between two or more regional countries that remove trade barriers between the countries in the agreement while keeping trade barriers for other countries. For example, the European Union is an economic union.

It is a type of intergovernmental agreement, often part of a regional intergovernmental organization, where regional barriers to international trade, are reduced or eliminated among the participating states, allowing them to trade with each other as easily as possible. A regional trading bloc is a group of countries within a geographical region that protect themselves from imports from non-members. It is a type of intergovernmental agreement, often part of a regional intergovernmental organization, where barriers to trade (tariffs and others) are reduced or eliminated among the participating states. A trade bloc is an agreement between countries intended to reduce or remove barriers to trade within member countries.
