SANTIAGO: Eleven countries, including Japan and Can­a­da, signed a landmark Asia-Pacific trade agreement without the United States on Thursday in what one minister called a powerful signal against protectionism and trade wars.

In Washington, US President Donald Trump vowed to press ahead with a plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, a move that other nations and the International Monetary Fund said could start a global trade war.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will reduce tariffs in countries that together amount to more than 13 percent of the global economy - a total of $10 trillion in gross domestic product. With the United States, it would have represented 40 percent.

Heraldo Munoz, Chile’s minister of foreign affairs, said the agreement was a strong signal “against protectionist pressures, in favour of a world open to trade, without unilateral sanctions and without the threat of trade wars”.

“We will be giving a very powerful signal,” he said at a news conference after giving a joint statement with trade ministers from Canada and New Zealand.

Even without the United States, the deal will span a market of nearly 500 million people, making it one of the world’s largest trade agreements, according to Chilean and Canadian trade statistics.

The original 12-member agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), was thrown into limbo early last year when Trump withdrew from the deal three days after his inauguration. He said the move was aimed at protecting US jobs.

The 11 remaining nations finalised a revised trade pact in January. That agreement will become effective when at least six member nations have completed domestic procedures to ratify it. The revised agreement eliminates some requirements of the original TPP demanded by US negotiators, including rules to ramp up intellectual property protection of pharmaceuticals. Governments and activists of other member nations worry the changes will raise the costs of medicine.

The final version of the agreement was released in New Zealand on Feb 21. The member countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

“We’re proud ... to show the world that progressive trade is the way forward, that fair, balanced, and principled trade is the way forward, and that putting citizens first is the way forward for the world when it comes to trade,” Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne said.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2018