| Among all the changes occurring in today’s world, one of the most important changes that necessary to understand is the economic integration which is moving forward together with the world’s changing situations. Thailand is going to be affected by economic integration in both positive and negative ways. The most spotted integration is "ASEAN Economic Community" or "AEC" that is going to occur in soon future. Other economic integrations interested by the whole world as factors that can cause changes in world economy are "Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement" or "TPP" and’"Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership" or "RCEP". In planning directions and preparing to cope with effects and influences that are going to come after economic integrations, important thing to understand is the basic knowledge of economic integration that has happened in the past. After the cold war period, the important factor in growth of a country was not security like before. The world has turned to be a big field for business competition, and all the countries were focusing on expanding their trades. At that time, under the great pressure that the United States will take over the world economy, many countries has gathered together to increase their economic potential and maintain the balancing of world trade.RCEP is an agreement to open free trade area among ASEAN members and countries that participated in ASEAN trading area including Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Japan, and India in order to expand the agreement to cover all the countries. The differences in economy and political systems of all countries has made RCEP becomes more flexible with customizable rules focusing on decreasing the gap between developments of member countries, connecting institutional potential, and tiding people’s lifestyles together.In contrast, TPP which is seriously supported by the United States is a business agreement that has added trading conditions more than what WTO has limited. Initially, there are4member countries in TPP (New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, and Chili), and some countries are negotiating about the agreement (Canada, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico) with no presence of India and China at all. TPP focuses on more than just products, services, and general investments, it focuses on intellectual property, labor standard, competitive policy, environment, and roles of State-Owned Enterprise which are big challenges of free trade in21st century. This, however, the question is what member countries are going to get from both of the agreements.However, a thing that cannot be forgotten is both of the agreements may lead to the direct conflict between the US and China that try to protect their benefit and seek for cooperation in FTA in Asia in their own ways. TPP that is supported by the US does not include China as a member country and RCEP does not include the US. Potentially, these agreements may shake ASEAN Community’s stability, as Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam participate in both RCEP and TPP, while other member countries participate only in RCEP.In RCEP, the process of agreement is still depend on the advancement of blueprint of AEC in2015, which means every member country should reform economic system both within the country and with other countries to be relevant to the changes and time specified in the agreement. Cooperation from private sectors will also be another important support leading RCEP to success. On the other side, TPP which may become the Gold-Standard FTA focus on FTA policy and international trade to support foreign trade and investment, and improving economic rules and regulation to become more strict.It can say that, TPP may affect produces and services in Thailand. This is the point where the government, public sectors, private organizations, and consumers in Thailand should be prepared to cope with, especially in the scope of intellectual properties and medical patent. The government should analyze trading policy that has influences towards the country, and consider free investment service which may have effects towards new agreements that may come in the future. At the same time, RCEP also affects Thailand both negatively and positively. Thailand is a small country with small-size market comparing to the world. Therefore, Thailand must depend on other countries in exporting. By doing this, there may be some effects and barriers from big and powerful countries in terms of price and export value.These are the reason of the study about Comparison of the Effect of RCEP and TPP: Opportunity or Trap for Thailand in order to use the result of the study in sustainable development in the future. This paper indicated RCEP is more suitable for Thailand than TPP in term of beneficial to ASEAN Community and to the feasibility of AEC which Thailand is an enthusiasm member country. The participation in RCEP provides maximum benefit and does not affect any relationship with the two superpowers whatsoever forasmuch as Thailand had pursued building the international relations policy continuously in various areas. |
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