U.S. And Japan To Talk

Japan’s government says it will give U.S. farmers the same deal they would have gotten in the Trans-Pacific Partnership; the same benefits and no more.

But still giving U.S. farmers a level playing field with former TPP partners like Canada, Mexico, and New Zealand.

Main features for U.S. Agriculture in there, were a significant lowering of tariffs across the board on many products,” said American Farm Bureau trade adviser Dave Salmonsen.  “Especially beef, which went from their current 38% down to 9%, pork products declined from, well, they were almost halved, depending upon the product, you had lower tariffs on dairy, fruits and vegetables.”

And, amid big losses from the tariff war with China and the continuing NAFTA stalemate with Canada, the news of talks with Japan is bringing a sigh of relief from U.S. ag leaders.  Salmonsen said gains with Japan, if based on TPP, could be huge.

“And out of the $5.5 billion that Farm Bureau analyzed annually would be new exports, into all the TPP countries, about $4.5 billion of that was to Japan.  And that’s why we’ve been pushing and happy that we could get back to  an agreement with Japan.”

Salmonsen said the agreement between President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to start direct trade talks reflects Trump’s favoring bilateral deals but could open the door to revisiting TPP.  The development also follows the U.S. signing an updated agreement with South Korea, and an earlier agreement to do a bilateral with the EU.

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