TOKYO, Oct. 30 – The Japanese government released a result of its provisional calculation of impacts of two trade agreements on agricultural, forestry and fishery products. The report on October 29 showed possible influence of the U.S.-Japan bilateral agreement and the agreement between members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) without the U.S., known as TPP-11.
The figure covers 33 product items whose tariff rates are over 10% and domestic production value is over 1 billion yen. The report said Japan can lose 120 to 200 billion yen in domestic production in total. The government will take measures to offset the impact on the income and production volume of Japanese farmers to zero, the report explained, however, the basis and details of the explanation are likely to be hot issues of discussions at the future Diet sessions.
The most significant impact is expected on beef production, which may reportedly drop by approximately 39.3 billion to 78.6 billion yen.
In a simple calculation, the sum of the estimated loss from the US-Japan agreement and that from the TPP11 deal is 260 billion yen at the maximum. However, the figure in the latest report is lower than this by 60 billion yen. The farm ministry explained that this is because the report assumed smaller cut in the domestic production for some items as it anticipated competitions between the U.S. and 11 TPP trade pact countries in the Japanese market.
The government and the ruling parties are aiming to earn approval for the multilateral trade pact during the current Diet session, before the enactment of the U.S.-Japan deal on January 1, 2020. On the same day, the government also announced the outcome of the final calculation of the impact on the entire Japanese economy. The announcement said they would raise the GDP of the country by 0.8% or approximately 4.2 trillion yen.