Unproductive Eighteen Hours

The biggest news on the bilateral talk was the time they spent. It took eighteen years without any definitive production. The United States Trade Representative, Michael Froman, left Japan leaving unsettled negotiation on Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would be one of the main agenda in coming summit talk between Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and U.S. President, Barack Obama. Depending on information coming from Japan side, Japanese news reports indicated possible U.S. compromise on beef.

Froman had deliberate meeting with Japanese Minister of State in charge of TPP, Akira Amari, between Wednesday and Thursday. To tell its result at first, they reached no agreement in spite of the long run talk. “We’ve made some progress over the last two days. But there’s still considerable differences on agriculture and autos,” told Froman to the reporters after the meeting. Asahi Shimbun cited a comment of Amari that “The summit talk would not be the landing point,” as if ignoring the basic agreement between Abe and Obama on having conclusion in Tokyo late April.

According to the reports, Froman had been insisting on abolishing of tariff on beef exports to Japan, while Amari been rejecting it. Bringing the agreement with Australia last week, which reduced tariff on Aussie beef almost by half, Amari demanded Froman abandoning total elimination. Some newspapers strongly indicated that U.S. had changed its policy from zero percent tariff to leaving single-digit tariff. It must be the top decision of Obama administration.

However, failure in protection of five important agricultural products, including beef, pork, rice, sugar, wheat and dairy products, will be serious breach of campaign promise of Liberal Democratic Party. Japanese parliament passed a resolution of protecting those five. Officers of Abe administration may need to find a good reasoning of TPP agreement, if it steps in the lower tariff. Beside political gaining points for Obama to have an agreement on TPP, U.S. has no reason to accept unfavorable deal in the negotiation.

Froman and Amari agreed at least with keeping momentum of the negotiation until Obama’s visit to Japan from April 23^rd to 25^th. Yomiuri reported a possibility of Amari to go to Washington next week to continue the dialogue with Froman. If the negotiation is broken up, Obama’s state visit to Japan is going to be nothing more than ceremony, with two dinners hosted by Abe and the Emperor, talking to Abe about Japan’s relationship with Asian countries that Abe cannot manage and situation of Ukraine that Abe is not interested in. Improvement of the alliance will not be easy.