When Japan and the United States begin a new round of trade talks, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, they should be in the format of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free trade agreement that was the bête noire of President Trump’s campaign. “I don’t want to go back into TPP,” responded Trump almost as quickly as Abe mentioned it during a Wednesday news conference.
Ag groups generally backed the 12-nation TPP as a way to increase U.S. farm exports, with the big prize being greater access to Japanese consumers. On April 12, Trump told his top economic advisers to look into rejoining the TPP “if the deal were substantially better.” He mentioned the TPP during a meeting with farm-state senators worried about a trade war with China, the No. 1 customer for U.S. farm goods. Japan is the fifth-largest export market, and nearly half the size of China’s.
“I don’t want to go back into TPP, but if they offered us a deal that I can’t refuse, on behalf of the United States, I would do it,” Trump said on Wednesday. “But I like bilateral. I think it’s better for our country. I think it’s better for our workers. And I would much prefer a bilateral deal, a deal directly with Japan. We already have a deal with six of the 11 nations in the TPP. So we already have trade deals, and the others we can make very easily.”
Farm groups are becoming increasingly restive because of slow progress on trade negotiations.