China and 14 other Asian-Pacific nations have signed a massive free trade agreement: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
The deal, announced Sunday, mostly lowers tariffs, with less focus on environmental, labor, intellectual property and other standards. Those virtues were features of another free trade pact meant as a counter-balance to China's rise: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
That 2016 deal was mostly negotiated on American terms and had the bipartisan backing of then-President Barack Obama and several Republican lawmakers who embraced the GOP's traditional advocacy of the economic and geopolitical benefits of free trade.
But the TPP was demagogued by then-candidate Donald Trump and abandoned by his opponent Hillary Clinton. Once elected, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, while the remaining nations ratified it. It's not clear if President-elect Joe Biden will spend the political capital to get the U.S. back into the deal. Biden, a trusted transatlantic advocate, will no doubt do his part. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, should do the same.