The United States and Japan plan to launch bilateral trade talks on April 15-16 in Washington, D.C., sources with knowledge of the plan said Friday as President Trump pushes what he calls fair and reciprocal trade.
The U.S. and Japan will seek to determine the scope of their future negotiations, laying the groundwork for a summit, possibly on April 26 between President Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Negotiations between Japan’s economic revitalization minister Toshimitsu Motegi and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are expected to be difficult, despite President Trump’s push for resolving the huge U.S. trade deficit with Japan. A series of local elections and a House of Councillors elections are scheduled in Japan this spring through summer, which will likely make it more difficult for Japanese negotiators to compromise.
Agriculture is expected to be a difficult area at a time when U.S. beef has seen its market share in Japan increasingly taken by its competitors now that a revised Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact has taken effect following Washington’s withdrawal.
Japan, wary of the U.S. push for further opening of the domestic agriculture market, has said it will not make bigger concessions than under existing bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements. Tokyo has maintained that the trade talks with Washington will primarily focus on goods only. However, the United States will be calling for a comprehensive pact that would cover not only goods but services and investment.
The first meeting will come later than initially thought as Lighthizer has had to focus first on the on-going U.S.-China trade talks. As Japan braced for the bilateral trade talks with the United States, the 11-member Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Japan’s economic partnership agreement with the European Union has taken effect.
Lighthizer has expressed concern that such tariff-cutting pacts would put American farmers at a disadvantage.
