Category Archives: Trade Talks

【News】 Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks – farmers’ voices (June 26, 2015)

  The U.S. Senate voted to pass the Trade Promotion Authority bill, giving President Barack Obama fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks. Now the talks are in its crucial stage, with a possibility of being completed by the end of July. Farmers have shown increasing concern over the future of regional agriculture and are calling on the government to keep the Diet resolution which is a “promise to the people of Japan” to protect the nation’s key farm items. *Takahiro Orimo, 42, pig breeder of Fujioka, Gunma Prefecture. Keeps 200 sows and ships 4,000 pigs annually. I am really shocked to see the TPP negotiations move towards conclusion. … Continue reading

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【Editorial】 Maximum caution necessary as U.S. passes trade promotion authority bill (June 20, 2015)

  The U.S. Senate is trying somehow or other to pass the second version of the trade promotion authority (TPA) bill which is said to be indispensable for President Barack Obama to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks. In a desperate effort to advance the bill and accelerate the TPP negotiations, Republican congressional leaders resorted to an extreme measure of separating a workers’ assistance bill originally packaged with the TPA bill. We have to keep watching the U.S. move with the greatest caution, along with the Japanese government’s eagerness to follow the U.S. U.S. Congress is now in chaos. The first version of the fast-track TPA bill was packaged with … Continue reading

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【Opinion】 The U.S. trade promotion authority vs. Japan’s Diet resolution (June 16, 2015)

  Yoichi Tashiro, Professor of agricultural economics at Otsuma Women’s University The U.S. House of Representatives has narrowly passed the Trade Promotion Authority bill, which would give President Barack Obama the latitude to negotiate a 12-nation Pacific trade deal sought by most Republicans, but since Democrats sank the related Trade Adjustment Assistance bill to slow down the process, further Congressional maneuvering is expected this week. It is surprising that the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks is becoming such an issue of controversy in U.S. politics. This shows that democracy still exists in the U.S. unlike in Japan, where the government is rushing to conclude the talks. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has … Continue reading

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【News】 1,500 people call for protection of farm products in TPP talks (May 20, 2015)

Some 1,500 people in the agriculture sector gathered from across the nation on Tuesday, May 19, in Tokyo to call on the government to protect sensitive farm items ahead of the ministerial meeting of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks expected later in the month. The Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives (JA-Zenchu) and a national political organization of farmers which hosted the rally invited ruling parties’ lawmakers and urged them to keep the Diet resolutions which pledged to protect key agricultural products such as rice and beef from tariff elimination. The United States Senate began deliberating the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill, which would give the White House more authority to … Continue reading

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【Japan Report】 Rice farmers concerned over possible increase of U.S. exports – Odate, Akita Prefecture (May 19, 2015)

  Tomokatsu Sowa Amid reports that Japan and the United States are considering expanding Japan’s import quota for U.S. rice in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks, Japanese farmers in rice growing regions are voicing worries and anger, saying that increased imports would ruin their efforts to balance domestic supply and demand by reducing production of table rice and shifting to production of rice for livestock feed. “Don’t they care if the government’s policy to tighten supply-demand balance of rice ends up in failure?” says Shusaku Watanabe, 78, who heads Oshigenai, an agricultural producers’ co-operative corporation in the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture. Hit by dropping rice prices, Oshigenai went into … Continue reading

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