Japan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks is going to come true in July. With the backing of approval by 11 Pacific Rim nations involved in the talks, the United States government was expected to seek congressional approval for the country to formally allow Japan in to the talks. As the Japanese government rushed to receive consent from the TPP participants for Japan to join the talks, it has made significant concessions in the preparatory negotiations. It was also asked by the U.S. to improve non-tariff measures in line with the TPP negotiations. This practically means negotiations will become like those for a bilateral free trade agreement. This is a scheme by the U.S. demanding Japan to conduct structural reform and deregulation through U.S.-led negotiations in both the TPP talks and bilateral negotiations. We cannot possibly overlook such a plot.
Can this be called diplomacy on even grounds? From the preliminary stage of negotiations, Japan has made various concessions with the U.S. and Canada mainly in the automotive sector. It has already lost important bargaining chips before entering actual negotiations, but the Japanese people have not even been informed of the details. It is incomprehensible why the domestic business circles do not raise their voices at a time when their business chances in the auto sector, the leading export industry, are at stake. If the opportunities for increasing exports are not ensured, the premises for the merits of joining the TPP talks as promoted by the government will fall apart. Despite the situation, no explanations or renewed estimates of the possible economic impacts have been given by the Japanese government so far.
The government is responsible for such circumstances, as it rushed to proceed with the negotiations without setting strategies, all for the purpose of joining the TPP talks in July. It is only natural that Akira Banzai, head of the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives (JA Zenchu), called on the government to “formulate a firm negotiating position which is accepted and backed by the Japanese people,” and which meets the Liberal Democratic Party’s campaign commitments and resolutions adopted by the LDP and the Diet. It also makes perfect sense for Banzai to ask the government to promise to immediately leave the negotiating table when it becomes difficult to maintain the position.
The joint statement issued by the governments of Japan and the U.S. after they finalized preparatory talks concerning Japan’s participation in the TPP negotiations revealed Japan’s negotiating position which is totally submissive to the U.S. Especially worrisome are the bilateral negotiations which are to be held in parallel with the TPP talks. The two governments agreed on addressing non-tariff measures in nine areas — insurance, transparency, investment, intellectual property rights, standards, government procurement, competition policy, express delivery and sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
These are the sectors in which the U.S. has repeatedly demanded Japan to make improvements, in such occasions as the Japan-U.S. structural impediments initiative talks, the annual reform recommendations from the U.S. to Japan and the U.S. government’s national trade estimate report on foreign trade barriers. In the reports, the U.S. has asked for investment facilitation for foreign companies, on the pretext of ensuring fair competition and global standards. For example, in the area of food safety regulations, the U.S. requested measures including acceleration and streamlining of approval procedures for food additives, deregulation of risk assessment related to post-harvest use of fungicides and allowing imports of gelatin and collagen made from U.S. beef which the Japanese government has banned after the U.S. discovered its first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)-infected cattle.
These nine areas are also closely connected with the TPP negotiations. The U.S. is highly likely to pressure Japan from both sides and try to obtain as much as possible from the negotiations. It is like engaging in a virtual negotiation for a Japan-U.S. free trade agreement behind the TPP talks. Even if the TPP negotiations are prolonged or the participants fail to reach agreement, the U.S. is tactful enough to guarantee a negotiation table in the bilateral talks to pressure Japan to open its market. This clearly goes against Japan’s national interests. The only choice for Japan to take is the immediate withdrawal from the negotiations.
(April 25, 2013)