The RCEP is a regional trade agreement that is being promoted by China and includes the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), India, Japan and South Korea. It is seen as a rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a US-led trade pact that recently failed to reach an agreement.

"There is no contradiction between RCEP and TPP. We welcome both," Mr Froman said in an interview with Channel NewsAsia on Monday (Aug 24), held on the sidelines of the ASEAN Economics Ministers Meetings in Kuala Lumpur. 

Mr Fromans comments come after ministers from the TPP member countries failed to clinch a final deal during negotiations in Hawaii in July, as disagreements over contentious reforms in agriculture, intellectual property, and services standards remain unresolved.

OF TRADE AND CRITICISM

Already eight years in the making, the TPP covers 12 Pacific Rim states, stretching from the United States and Peru, to Japan and Australia, and also includes Singapore and Malaysia. The deal is supposed to cut trade barriers and set common standards for 40 per cent of global trade.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a US-based think-tank, the trade pact could potentially raise regional economic output by S$285 billion in 10 years.

However, a major criticism of the TPP is that China, the second-largest economy in the world, has not been part of the negotiations. And over the weekend, trade and legislative representatives in Australia, concerned about the deal’s impact on its domestic economy, protested against the TPP, calling for it to be “scrapped entirely”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

However, Mr Froman insisted that the “TPP is not directed against any country” and instead, “it is setting high standards for the region as a whole”.

ON CHINA AND THE YUAN

With regards to Chinas recent shock move to devalue the yuan, Mr Froman said: "The long-standing position of the IMF and the G20 and others is that countries should move towards market-determined exchange rates.

“They should avoid manipulating their currencies and that should be the foundation in which that system is based. In the meantime, we should focus on trade agreements to eliminate barriers to markets.”

Mr Froman declined to state when new rounds of talks for the TPP will be held but added that “our expectation is that we will get it done over the course of this administration”.

Political analysts have called the TPP the economic arm of President Obama’s “pivot towards Asia” strategy – an attempt to strengthen American presence in the region while simultaneously protecting American businesses against strategic competition from China.