Intraregional Trade of the Asia-Pacific Under the Influence of Geopolitical Factors

The article examines «deep» and «shallow» stages of international economic integration from the perspective of classical and modern researchers. As an example of «shallow» economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region, the author studied the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), as an example of «deep» integration – ASEAN (from a canonical point of view, the bloc is not such, however, it has some elements of financial integration). The aggravation of the geopolitical situation in the region (the «trade war» between China and the United States) affects the formation of trade blocs and the dynamics of foreign trade of the Asia-Pacific countries. Based on the econometric analysis of the Tinbergen model, the study showed that such geopolitical factors as territorial disputes have a negative impact on intraregional trade within ASEAN and RCEP both in the medium term (2014–2023) and in the long-term retrospective (1993–2023). At the same time, «trade wars» have a negative effect in the long term for both blocs (more pronounced for ASEAN) while a positive effect in the medium term for RCEP and negative effect for ASEAN. RCEP member states compete in the main commodity markets of the region and the world, thus the positive effect of trade wars in the medium term. For ASEAN, whose level of integration is deeper, the effects of trade wars are always negative. The multidirectional effect of trade wars on blocks with varying degrees of «depth» of integration processes requires further investigation with new objects and time periods