The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-11-16)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Monday, November 16, 2020 |A

Japan’s largest trading partners,

raising the level of nontariff

items sent to South Korea to

92% from 19%, and to China to

86% from 8%.

Japan’s automobile industry,

a key driver of the economy,

stands to gain. The deal will

eliminate tariffs on nearly $

billion of auto parts sent to

China each year—accounting for

87% of all such items exported

to its western neighbor, the Jap-

anese government said.

Officials across the region

said they expect the agreement

will help countries better fight

the economic hit from the pan-

demic. Mohamed Azmin Ali, Ma-

laysia’s international trade min-

ister, called the deal an

“economic-recovery tool” that

will help to open markets and

strengthen supply chains.

National governments need

to ratify the pact before it takes

effect.

—Xiao Xiao in Beijing and

Chester Tay in Kuala Lumpur

contributed to this article.

throughout the region with

lower tariffs, trade experts fa-

miliar with the deal said.

At a ceremony on Sunday,

which was conducted via video-

conference because of the pan-

demic, ministers from the 15

countries signed the agreement

and held up their signatures to

the cameras. The deal’s comple-

tion comes after several years of

growing trade tensions, particu-

larly between the U.S. and China,

that raised questions about the

future of globalization.

Premier Li Keqiang of China

said that the signing showed

that multilateralism and free

trade “still represent the right

direction of the world economy

and mankind.” He said the

deal is a “landmark achievement

of East Asian regional coopera-

tion” that would provide a boost

to the global economy.

According to Japan’s govern-

ment, the RCEP will elimi-

nate tariffs on 91% of goods

among members. It will slice

trade barriers with many of

to protest, culminating in dem-

onstrations Saturday that police

cracked down on, killing two

men and injuring about 100.

Many of those who pro-

tested saw the fall of Mr. Me-

rino in less than a week as an

opening for bigger change,

though exactly what kind of

Peru would emerge from the

chaos was unclear.

“This is the best thing that

could have happened for Peru,”

said Raul Abregu, 55, whose fa-

ther-in-law died from Covid-19.

From 2003 until last year,

Peru grew at the fastest rate

among Latin America’s biggest

with a steady hand until presi-

dential elections in April. “But

even under the best scenario,

it’s going to be rocky,” he said.

In Peru, fury over corruption

in the congress—68 of 130 of

them are under investigation

for graft and other crimes—

boiled over this week when Mr.

Vizcarra was unseated as his

government grappled with the

twin challenges of a pandemic

that has caused more than

35,000 deaths, the second-high-

est per capita rate in the world,

and an economic contraction.

From jungle towns to highland

cities, Peruvans hit the streets

who had broken with most oth-

ers to vote against impeach-

ment. Media reports said law-

makers were also considering

members of the centrist Purple

Party, which overwhelmingly

opposed removing Mr. Vizcarra.

But by late in the evening,

the badly divided body hadn’t

appointed a president.

“It’s a country that is obvi-

ously very agitated and fed up

and really suffering because of

the pandemic and the econ-

omy,” said Michael Shifter,

president of the Washington-

based Inter-American Dialogue.

He said Peru needs someone

WORLD NEWS

MILAN—The fast-rising

number of coronavirus pa-

tients in Italy’s intensive-care

wards is on pace to soon sur-

pass this spring’s deadly first

peak of the pandemic, raising

anxiety in a country that is

locking down more regions.

Although social-distancing

measures have reduced the

speed of the increase in hospi-

talizations in the past few

days, Italy is still on course to

have more Covid-19 patients in

intensive care by the last week

of November than the 4,

reached in April, when the

first wave peaked.

As of Sunday, Italy had

3,422 coronavirus cases in in-

tensive care. The total number

of patients hospitalized, at

35,469, is already higher than

this spring’s peak.

Early this year, Italy was

the first Western country to

be hit hard by the coronavirus,

and the first to impose a na-

tionwide lockdown.

The country began reopen-

ing in May and by the summer

life had almost returned to

normal, as millions of people

headed to the beaches and

mountains.

Health experts had warned

that the consequences of the

freewheeling summer, fol-

lowed in September by the re-

turn to work and school, could

translate into a resurgence of

infections and hospitaliza-

tions. But Italy’s recent surge

has exceeded even the most

pessimistic forecasts.

On Oct. 1, there were fewer

than 3,400 people in Italian

hospitals being treated for

Covid-19, of which 291 were in

intensive care. That day, 24

people died because of the vi-

rus. Since then, the number of

people in the hospital and

those in intensive care has

risen more than 10-fold.

BYERICSYLVERS

Case Surge

Stretches

Hospitals

In Italy

LIMA, Peru—Peru was rud-
derless Sunday night, with its
president having resigned just
six days after taking power and
political leaders unable to
agree on a new head of state to
end a constitutional crisis that
exposed deep popular anger
over corruption in the coun-
try’s political class.
A country of 32 million that
before Covid-19 was considered
a shining economic star is now
flailing in uncharted waters.
There is no president at the
helm, and a fractured congress
is trying to decide who should
lead the country while people
protest in the streets. Two
presidents are gone in less than
a week—Martin Vizcarra was
impeached last Monday and
then Manuel Merino, who engi-
neered his predecessor’s ouster,
resigned Sunday.
On Sunday night, the same
lawmakers whose impeachment
of Mr. Vizcarra touched off six
days of protests were in the
congress, debating who among
them would be chosen to re-
place Mr. Merino, who had no
vice president. They had at one
point been considering a left-
wing lawmaker, Rocio Silva,

BYRYANDUBE
ANDJUANFORERO

WORLD WATCH

Western Sahara region, as fight-

ing snapped a United Nations-

brokered truce agreement that

had calmed the area’s conflict

for nearly 30 years.

The clashes threatened the

stability of Morocco and neigh-

boring Algeria, two key U.S. secu-

rity partners in an otherwise un-

stable part of northwest Africa.

Fighting took place along a

1,700-mile sand wall separating

Morocco’s forces from those of

the pro-independence Polisario

Front, the group’s U.N. envoy said.

The Polisario’s leadership said

Saturday that it was ending its

commitment to the 1991 cease-

fire agreement, with the move-

ment’s leaders calling for a mass

mobilization of people for a mili-

tary effort against Morocco.

The Trump administration has

raised the idea of backing Mo-

rocco’s claim to Western Sahara

if its leaders opened ties with

Israel, according to U.S. officials.

—Jared Malsin

ETHIOPIA

Conflict Spreads Into

Neighboring Eritrea

Ethiopia’s conflict with its re-
gional government of Tigray is
spilling into the wider Horn of Af-
rica after militias in the rebellious
state fired rockets at the capital
of neighboring Eritrea.
Ethiopia is facing a civil war
between the central government
and the heavily armed Tigray, a

largely autonomous state in the

north that wants a bigger voice in

government. The crisis, which has

left hundreds dead and forced

thousands to flee, is reopening

fault lines across a volatile region.

The leader of the Tigray Peo-

ple’s Liberation Front, the party of

the regional government, said

Sunday his forces fired rockets at

Asmara, Eritrea’s mountaintop

capital, on Saturday night. Tigray’s

regional government says some

16 Eritrean military divisions are

fighting alongside the Ethiopian

military against Tigrayan forces, a

claim both governments deny.

—Nicholas Bariyo

WESTERN SAHARA

Morocco Forces Clash

With Separatists

Moroccan military forces

traded gunfire Sunday with

members of an independence

movement in the contested

most vibrant economies in the
Asia-Pacific region, which set
aside geopolitical differences to
boost trade and growth during
the coronavirus pandemic.
Apart from China, it includes
Japan, South Korea, Australia,
New Zealand and 10 Southeast
Asian nations, from Indonesia
and Vietnam to Thailand and
Singapore.
“Encouraging free trade is
even more important now that
the global economy is in a slump
and there are signs of countries
turning inward,” Prime Minister
Yoshihide Suga of Japan said
during the RCEP meeting, a Jap-
anese government official said.
The world’s largest economy,
the U.S., isn’t a part of the deal.
It was involved in the concep-
tion of a different bloc called the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, or
TPP, that didn’t include Beijing
and was aimed in part at coun-
tering China’s growing clout. But
Washington, which shunned big
multilateral trade pacts under
the Trump administration,
pulled out of that pact, a modi-
fied version of which was signed
by the other 11 countries in the
grouping.
The deal signed on Sunday—
which is more limited in scope
than the TPP—increases pres-
sure on Mr. Biden to deepen U.S.
trade engagement in the Asia-
Pacific region. He warned last
year that if the U.S. doesn’t
write the rules of the road,
China will, and said he would try
to renegotiate the TPP, but
hasn’t taken a firm position.
Mr. Biden’s transition team
declined to comment on the
RCEP on Sunday.
Although most countries that
are part of Sunday’s deal already
have tight trade ties—they rely
on one another for goods from
rice imports to semiconductor
sales—their new agreement is
considered significant because it
will result in a more unified
trading system. That should
make it easier for the region’s
manufacturers to import raw
materials from around the bloc
without facing high tariffs, and
export finished products

ContinuedfromPageOne

New Pact

Links Trade

Across Asia

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, left, and Minister of

Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh cheer the RCEP’s signing from Hanoi.

LUONG THAI LINH/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

economies, with a dramatic re-

duction in poverty. But the

pandemic has buffeted the

economy, leading to the Inter-

national Monetary Fund to esti-

mate it would contract by 14%

this year.

Several top executives had

urged Mr. Merino to leave of-

fice, including the chief execu-

tives of food company Alicorp,

mining company Minsur and

Banco de Credito, Peru’s big-

gest bank.

With Peruvians protesting

every day since Mr. Vizcarra

left office, Mr. Merino’s admin-

istration was under heavy

pressure from its inception,

with Peruvians seeing im-

peachment as a power grab by

lawmakers looking to protect

their personal interests and

sideline anticorruption investi-

gations into their activities. By

Saturday, after the protest

deaths, one after another of

Mr. Merino’s ministers had

abandoned the government. In

all, 13 resigned.

Just after noon Sunday, Mr.

Merino, a former rice and bean

farmer, had resigned.

Several human rights organ-

izations called on prosecutors

to press criminal charges

against him and other officials.

Fornow,Mr.Vizcarraisthe

only player to be under investi-

gation. His ousting was based

on unproven allegations that he

took $640,000 in bribes from

construction companies while a

state governor. He denied the

claims.

Peru Teeters, Second Leader Quits

President lasts just six

days as protests turn

deadly; lawmakers are

divided on successor

Police blocked access to the presidential palace in Lima on Sunday after the resignation of Manuel Merino.

LUKA GONZALES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Chinese Production

Tops Expectations

BEIJING—China’s economic

activity posted a broad-based

recovery in October, paving the

way for a faster economic re-

bound in the final quarter of

the year.

Both investment and con-

sumer spending grew at faster

year-over-year rates in October

than the month before, while

industrial production, the first

sector to emerge from this

year’s coronavirus-induced

slump, remained solid, again

topping market expectations.

Industrial output, which has

led the nation’s economic recov-

ery in recent months, rose 6.9%

in October from a year earlier,

on par with September’s pace

and higher than market expec-

tations for a 6.5% increase, ac-

cording to data released Mon-

day by the National Bureau of

Statistics.

Retail sales rose 4.3% in Oc-

tober from a year ago, acceler-

ating from a 3.3% increase in

September but lower than a

4.6% increase expected by econ-

omists. —Jonathan Cheng

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