Deal or no deal: is Asean’s RCEP trade pact going the way of the TPP?

It’s almost as if there’s a playbook for forging multilateral trade deals that says prolonged procrastination is a key negotiation ritual.For the fifth straight year, officials from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the bloc’s six key trading partners – India, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – are insisting that they are in the last-chance saloon to wrap up a deal to make the 16 countries the world’s biggest free-trade zone.Asean already has free…