Japan Press Weekly

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2013 February 27 - March 5 [ECONOMY]

No guarantee of protection in TPP talks: JCP Inoue

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Inoue Satoshi on February 27 demanded that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo give up his intent to take part in the multinational free trade negotiations, arguing that there is no guarantee that Japan’s key items will be protected as exceptions in the talks.

Prime Minister Abe insists that he will be able to keep his party’s election pledges that the Liberal Democratic Party will not agree to participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement talks if the TPP presupposes the removal of all tariffs. He makes this claim on the basis of the Japan-U.S. Joint Statement released after the Abe-Obama Summit meeting stating, “[I]t is not required to make a prior commitment to unilaterally eliminate all tariffs upon joining the TPP negotiations.”

However, during the day’s Upper House Budget Committee meeting, Inoue counter-argued that the language Abe cites only means that Japan can ask for some exceptions in the talks but there is no guarantee the talks will grant exceptions to particular items.

The JCP lawmaker added that New Zealand, for example, calls for no exceptions while Japan needs to obtain an approval from all participating nations to enter the TPP talks.

He pointed out that an LDP local chapter in the last general election put up a placard proclaiming that the LDP is “Dead set against TPP!” and that the agriculture minister stated in the Diet last week that “it would be difficult to join in the talks if they run contrary to the LDP election promise.”

Inoue criticized Abe for trying to deceive the general public by claiming that the TPP is not something that will be used to do away with all tariffs without exceptions since he came up with this after talking only with the U.S. counterpart.

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To the government council for industrial competitiveness held the day before, the Cabinet Secretariat distributed materials noting as a disadvantage of the TPP agreement that tariffs on all items are instantly required to be lifted in principle.

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PM Abe, in response to Kakisawa Mito of the Your Party at a Lower House committee meeting on February 28, said what the Liberal Democratic Party stated during the last general election campaign were not “public promises”. He explained that they were policies the LDP intends to work toward, not public promises.


Feature Article:
> Opposition to TPP