Why Biden needs a reckoning with RCEP, the world's largest trading bloc? Topics Insight The inclusion of all the big guns in East Asia namely China, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand has turned RCEP into an indispensable trading bloc, underlining diminution of America's economic influence. It seems that the global impetus of regionalism motivating multilateral attempts towards economic integration is still well and alive, despite the destructive impact of the Trump administration in US politics. However, the dynamism for regional integration via free trade agreements has recently been confined to the Asia-Pacific, considerably losing its appeal in other geographies. While the looming agenda of neo-protectionism in the US turned into a deliberate policy of inciting trade wars with China under President Trump, trade liberalisation in the global economic system remained pretty much deprived of its main sponsor. As the US as the ‘reluctant global hegemon’ began to gradually withdraw from the international fora of multilateral governance in view of cost-efficiency calculations and focused on its own geopolitical priorities, regionalism fell into political limbo.