[By Masaru Yamada, The Japan Agricultural News Senior Special Writer]
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Tokyo’s Kasumigaseki district is haunted. Normally you can’t see the ghost, but it is witnessed once in a while. Recently, it showed itself amid a confusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations.
The Japanese government imports 767,000 tons of rice every year under the minimum access scheme agreed upon in the negotiations for the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade concluded in the end of 1993. The Japanese and United States governments were engaged in fierce under-the-table negotiations at that time on the degree of Japan’s rice market liberalization before coming to agreement.
In the process, Japan proposed that it would purchase a large amount of rice from the U.S. if the U.S. compromises on its push for Japan to liberalize its market. This proposal was said to have been flatly refused by the U.S. negotiators.
However, the secret agreement to give preferential treatment to U.S. rice has survived as a ghost for more than two decades in the form of share guarantee by Japan’s farm ministry. Despite continued pressure from the Diet and criticisms that it is a waste of taxpayers’ money, the ministry has kept on buying 47 percent of minimum access rice from the U.S. every year.
The same thing is about to happen under the TPP agreement. The United States International Trade Commission’s report released in May notes that there are “a number of expected Japanese commitments” which are “not documented in the official TPP agreement text or corresponding side letter.” It says Japan has committed to setting up a quota “specifically allocated for imports of medium-grain rice used for processing,” with “80 percent guaranteed to the United States.” If that is true, it goes against international trade rules which promote non-discrimination obligations among countries. Japan’s agriculture ministry denies there was such a commitment, but their objection sounds unconvincing, considering that they have failed to do away with the secret agreement that haunts the ministry for two decades.
Once the TPP agreement takes effect and rice imports start under the new pact, does that mean two ghosts – one born 20 years ago and another to be created under the TPP framework – will live together happily in the farm ministry corridors?
Why did a secret agreement emerge in Japan-U.S. negotiations on rice two decades ago? How did it lead to another secret agreement in the TPP talks? Such issues are discussed in detail in the writer’s latest book “Bokoku no Mitsuyaku (secret agreements that ruin the nation),” published by Shinchosha last month.