President Trump has reached a tentative trade deal with Japan and if ratified by the Senate would increase exports to Japan by billions and billions of dollars and would cut into the losses of exports to China.
There is still much work to do on the agreement and few details have been released other than to say that Japan would be buying more of our agricultural products that would lessen the impact of the impasse in the China trade talks.
Once the deal is finalized, the president will have to send it to congress.
Look for the Democrats to find problems with the deal that are really nonexistent.
For more than a year, Trump has threatened to impose steep tariffs on Japan related to automobiles. He has said that Japan imports too many cars into the United States relative to what U.S. automakers send to Japan. But the trade pact under discussion does not appear to have much to do with cars.
U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer told reporters that the deal would focus on “agriculture, industrial tariffs and digital trade.”
Trump has long tried to pressure other countries to buy more U.S. agricultural products, and he said this would be an element of the agreement with Japan.
“Perhaps you’d like to talk about” Japan’s plans to buy “hundreds of millions of dollars of corn that’s there, that you’ll be buying,” Trump told Abe in front of reporters.
Abe responded that there was need for Japanese companies to purchase corn but that “this will be done by the Japanese private sector.”
Larry Kudlow, one of Trump’s top economic advisers, said Sunday in an interview on CNN that the trade pact with Japan would have major positive implications for the United States. Precise details were not available, however.
Trump is facing increased pressure to show results from his long-standing effort to force other countries to make trade concessions, and Abe said more work was needed to complete the arrangement between the two countries.
“We still have some remaining work that has to be done at the working level,” Abe said.