Overview

LONDON — Britain’s Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, formally signed a treaty confirming accession to the vast Indo-Pacific CPTPP bloc, the country’s largest post-Brexit trade deal to date.

Signed Sunday in New Zealand, the deal will now receive parliamentary scrutiny in the U.K., while other CPTPP nations will also complete their own legislative processes. More than 99% of the current U.K. goods that are exported to CPTPP countries will soon be eligible for zero tariffs, the U.K. government said.

Membership and Economic Impact

The 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership includes Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia, among others. The U.K. would be the first European nation to join the bloc, which the government says would unlock trade to a region with a total GDP of £12 trillion ($15.7 trillion).

It remains to be seen how much the deal actually benefits Britain’s growth prospects. Based on the government’s own estimates, the deal will raise long-term domestic GDP by just 0.08%, which will have little impact to offset European trade losses as a result of Brexit. The U.K. officially left the EU on Jan. 31, 2020.

Benefits and Opportunities

Kemi Badenoch said Sunday that Britain was using its status as an independent trading nation to join an “exciting, growing, forward-looking trade bloc.”

“[It] will help grow the U.K. economy and build on the hundreds of thousands of jobs CPTPP-owned businesses already support up and down the country,” she said in a statement. One in every 100 workers in Britain was employed by a business headquartered in a CPTPP nation, according to the government citing 2019 data.

History and Development

The trade pact evolved out of the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, that originated in the United States but fell apart after former President Donald Trump scrapped U.S. involvement.