Japan, U.S. to negotiate tariffs comprehensively: Motegi

April 16, 2019

Washington--Japan and the United States will negotiate goods tariff reductions and eliminations comprehensively in the first round of bilateral trade talks that started Monday, a Japanese official said.

"We will, in principle, be making decisions as a package," Economic Revitalization Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told a press conference after the first day of talks in Washington with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Motegi, also minister for Japan-U.S. trade negotiations, rejected the view that the two countries will conclude a deal on agricultural trade first, as demanded by the U.S. farm industry.

He stressed that tariff reductions and eliminations for automobiles and other industrial products should be considered as well as those for the agricultural sector.

The first round will continue until Tuesday. The focus is how far the service-sector issues should be covered in the negotiations in addition to goods trade.

"Our discussions included practical issues," Motegi said of the day's negotiations, which lasted about three hours.

But he declined to say whether Washington demanded a currency provision to ban Japan from weakening the yen to boost exports or a cap on Japanese automobile exports to the United States.

Motegi said will give an explanation after the second-day session ends on Tuesday.

In September last year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to start bilateral trade talks on goods tariffs and some service-sector issues that are expected to be resolved swiftly.

Japan hopes to focus on goods trade. Regarding the agricultural sector, its position is that access of U.S. agricultural products to the Japanese market should not exceed the level of the Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral free trade pact, from which the United States has withdrawn.

Meanwhile, the Office of the USTR in December last year unveiled a list of 22 negotiation areas, including nontariff barriers in the Japanese automobile market and currency issues.

Washington could take a hard line and propose a Japanese auto exports cap in response to calls from the U.S. auto industry. Jiji Press