TOKYO: Japan won’t compromise its national interests in trade talks with the US by fixating on time limits, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (pic) said, signalling Tokyo isn’t rushing into an agreement.
The nation won’t simply be going down the same path after the UK became the first nation to reach a trade agreement with the Trump administration earlier this month, and China reached a temporary truce with the US, Ishiba said in parliament on Monday (May 19).
Japan will continue to seek exemptions for all additional tariffs imposed by the US, the prime minister said, as recent polls showed his support rate slipping further.
"We will not follow other countries simply because they are moving forward,” Ishiba said. "Of course we will keep time limits in mind during negotiations, but we have no intention of compromising our national interests by becoming overly fixated on them.”
The premier’s comments suggest that Japan isn’t seeking a quick deal even as an across-the-board levy is scheduled to return to an original 24% in early July, up from the current 10% "baseline” rate.
Ishiba has said Japan won’t accept a deal that won’t address a separate 25% tariff on cars, a key economic engine for the country. US President Donald Trump has also hit Japan and others with the same level of levies on aluminum and steel.
Ishiba didn’t specify what time limits he had in mind. Local media reports say the country’s top trade negotiator Ryosei Akazawa is set to visit the US again this week for a third round of talks with his counterparts.
As the negotiations continue, the tariffs are expected to hit Japanese companies for longer. Japan’s economy contracted in the first quarter even before most of the extra US tariffs were implemented, raising the risk of a technical recession, or two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Japan didn’t send its top trade officials to a regional conference in South Korea last week, where trade chiefs from other nations competed for time with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Japan’s state trade minister Masaki Ogushi, who attended the gathering, didn’t manage to secure a meeting with Greer. - Bloomberg
