Japan Press Weekly

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2020 November 25 - December 1 TOP3 [ECONOMY]

JCP Kami demands abolition of Trump-Abe trade deal

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Kami Tomoko on November 17 at a House of Councilors committee meeting said that the current Japan-U.S. trade deal, which was signed by former Prime Minister Abe under pressure from President Trump, should be terminated considering that Democrat Joe Biden will likely become the next U.S. president.

At the meeting of the Upper House Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee, Kami pointed out that while Japanese beef farmers are in a great quandary with the decline in demand for beef due to the pandemic, as of October, the amount of imported U.S. beef reached 156,000 tons, twice that of a year earlier.

Kami referred to a news report that the total volume of beef imports from the U.S. will exceed the baseline level in February which triggers safeguard measures agreed upon in the bilateral trade deal. In this regard, Kami pointed out that under the Trump-Abe agreement, however, those measures are not likely to be applied because it contains a provision calling on the two governments to negotiate an increase in the trigger level for the safeguard mechanism.

Furthermore, the JCP lawmaker pointed out that the bilateral trade agreement includes another controversial provision which enables the U.S. government to demand preferential tariff treatment by Japan for U.S. agricultural products in future trade talks. She demanded that this blatantly unequal trade agreement be terminated.

In response to grilling by Kami, Agriculture Minister Nogami Kotaro failed to give clear explanations regarding these two provisions.

Past related article:
> JCP Koike: What's win-win with Japan-US trade deal? [October 10, 2019]
> Abe’s submissive stance in trade talks with US will lead Japan into economic ruin [April 19, 2019]