Maiko Takahashi and David Tweed Tokyo
US and Japanese officials failed to reach agreement in marathon bilateral trade talks in Tokyo, a setback for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s hopes of arriving for a summit in Washington next week with a pact in hand.
US Trade Representative Michael Froman left Tokyo after negotiations concluded around 4am yesterday, with differences remaining over vehicle and rice imports. Froman had travelled to Japan on Sunday for two days of talks with Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari to help pave the way for a broader Asia- Pacific agreement involving 10 other nations.
Differences on trade matters have “substantially narrowed,” Froman said before leaving the Japanese capital. The two countries have reached “stage nine out of 10” in the discussions, Abe said in a television interview.
“They tried to spin it in a positive way, but what seems to be pretty clear is that there is no breakthrough,” said James Brown, an assistant professor for international affairs at Temple University in Tokyo.
“On a foreign policy level, this is a major disappointment” ahead of Abe’s trip to the US that begins on Sunday.
The slow progress by Japan and the US in advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact in order to remain a centre of economic gravity in Asia comes as China enhances its own clout by luring more than 50 countries to join a new China-led regional infrastructure bank (AIIB). Japan and the US have been trying to overcome differences since Japan first said it would seek to join the TPP in 2013.
Speaking after the talks ended, Amari told reporters that he would meet again with Froman if needed before a meeting of all 12 nations involved with the TPP. He didn’t indicate when such a meeting could be held.
Vital pillar
US officials have taken every opportunity in recent weeks to underscore that TPP is a vital pillar of its “rebalance” to Asia, and the US and Japan both raised concerns over transparency and governance in shunning the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter strayed from military issues in a Tokyo appearance to talk about the importance of TPP in a joint press conference with Japanese Defence Minister General Nakatani on April 8. Two days earlier, Carter told an audience in Arizona that the deal was “as important to me as another aircraft carrier.”
The TPP would link economies across the Pacific, making up roughly 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. The other participants are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The US Senate Committee on Finance introduced a bipartisan bill last week in Washington that could have sped passage of TPP-related trade legislation in Congress. The legislation would let the White House send Congress trade pacts for votes without amendment, known as trade promotion authority. It also would give Congress the right to revoke the so-called fast-track process if enough lawmakers find the president ignored negotiating goals.
“Fortunately, the US Congress does seem to be working on getting that trade promotion authority, and if that goes through then this will be a lot easier to do,” said Robert Feldman, chief economist at Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities in Tokyo. “There is always a great deal of brinkmanship involved in these negotiations, so the fact that things are reported to have gotten a little bumpy at a very, very late stage doesn’t surprise me a bit.”
Reluctant
The setback if it endures would make it less likely that Japan and the US will get a deal this year. With the US presidential campaign beginning to heat up, Congress may prove more reluctant to approve any trade detail next year before the vote.
“No-one doubts that the gaps between the US and Japanese positions on market access issues have narrowed,” Richard Katz, publisher of the US-based Oriental Economist Report, wrote after the talks ended. “But it remains in serious question whether they will narrow enough to allow the two countries to come to an agreement in time so that TPP can be ratified in 2015 – which means signing TPP by around the end of June.”
While TPP talks languish, China and the other members of the AIIB plan to sign the articles governing its management by the end of June. – Bloomberg