Not content with its trade war against China, United States President Donald Trump’s administration has also opened bilateral trade negotiations with Japan. Yet whatever Trump hopes to achieve with Japan will be far less than what he threw away when he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership in early 2017.
Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP is a good example of his trade-policy recklessness. Signed in 2016 by the US and 11 other Pacific Rim countries, the treaty would have governed about 40% of all trade covered by World Trade Organisation rules. Now that the CPTPP has entered into force, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam enjoy preferential access to each other’s markets. As tariffs are phased out, US suppliers in those markets are finding themselves at a growing disadvantage. The Japanese tariff on American beef imports has remained at 38.5%, but the levy on beef from fellow CPTPP countries has fallen to 27.5% and eventually will reach just 9%.
Great president