Posted April 21, 2014
Japan and Australia recently reached a bilateral trade
deal, agreeing to lower import tariffs on several products including beef,
dairy, and automobiles, according to an article by the Bridges Weekly Trade
News Digest available here.
Some now question what impact this trade deal will have
on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations which are set to resume
this week.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has “made
deepening Asian ties one of the main focuses of his prime ministership,
particularly given the high reliance his country has on trade from the
region. China, Japan, and South Korea
together account for 55 percent of Australia’s total bilateral trade.”
US negotiators have been working for months to reach a
deal with Japan over agriculture and automobile tariffs, but have had limited
progress.
Some say the Australia-Japan deal damages the TPP, according
to an article by Agri-Pulse available here. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) President
Bob McCan said his organization is “deeply concerned” and that the deal “only
pushes the high-standing ideals of the TPP further out of reach for all
countries involved.”
The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) called for
Japan to eliminate all tariff and non-tariff trade barriers for US agricultural
products, saying “If the United States meets Japan’s demands, it would be a
radical departure from past U.S. trade agreements and would open the door to
tariff line exemptions from other countries in the TPP and in future U.S. trade
deals.”
Meat
and poultry groups recently thanked President Obama for his administration’s “strong
stance” on agricultural tariffs in TPP negotiations. “We appreciate that, in the latest round of
talks in Tokyo on a [TPP] agreement, your representatives did not capitulate to
Japan’s continuing attempt to maintain protectionist barriers to our products,”
the groups wrote.
For more information on international trade, please
visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
