Negotiators meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, last week continued their efforts to finalise talks this year for a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a 16-country trade and investment deal in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the pace of the talks to date have led some observers to speculate that this process could drag on past the end-2016 target. The RCEP includes all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with six countries with whom ASEAN has an FTA – Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. Proponents of the deal say that the final accord would make significant improvements on these existing “ASEAN+1” trade pacts. The RCEP countries account for almost a third of world GDP, at US$23 trillion, and 20 percent of global services trade, while covering more than three billion people, according to New Zealand government statistics . (See Bridges Weekly, 3 March 2016 ) Since negotiations were formally launched in November 2012, there have been 13 negotiating rounds as well as three meetings at the ministerial level and several intersessional meetings. Topics for discussion include goods, services, investment, competition, intellectual property, economic and technical cooperation, e-commerce, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary...