COMPLAINTS DIVORCED FROM REALITY
Once seen through a 1980s lens as a protectionist nation, Japan is now a champion of free trade, rescuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership when Trump abandoned it in his first term, and helping lead the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that covers trade across much of Asia.
But can Akazawa persuade the US side to see reality? Trump’s complaints have been largely divorced from reality, from his talk of barriers on auto sales to suggestions that it levies a 700 per cent import on rice, a figure that ministers have derided as “incomprehensible”.
This thinking isn’t just limited to the current president. Successive US administrations, from both sides of the aisle, have found things in Japan they dislike. In the posthumous memoirs of the late Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister details how in 2014, then President Barack Obama made much the same argument as Trump.
Dining at famed sushi joint Sukiyabashi Jiro, Obama told Abe: “I didn’t see a single American car on my way here. You need to do something about this.”
The prime minister explained there were no tariffs on US cars, but Obama protested, citing supposed “non-tariff barriers”. Perhaps it’s not hard to see where this line comes from, with the Hudson Institute noting Japan autos are so successful in the US, they account for more than three-quarters of the trade deficit.
But Abe explained that American makers simply made no effort to sell in his country, neither changing the position of the steering wheel to match Japanese roads, nor even advertising on TV like European makers. Obama “shut up pretty quickly after that,” Abe wrote.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/japan-trade-deal-ishiba-us-trump-tariff-auto-rice-5069481
