White House and USTR officials have been quick
to add that everything is on the table. Fair enough. But Japan is not the only country
that will have a hard time clearing domestic obstacles without one exception or
other, and there must be more powerful agricultural lobbies than rice farmers.
Does this mean that the Abe and Obama administrations had this preliminary outcome
in their sights all along? Could be. And with the 20-30 month-old beef already
taken care of under the Noda administration—seriously, Abe really should thank Noda,
if he hasn’t already—the Detroit Three’s grievances against Japanese auto manufacturers
and US insurers’ complaints against the Japan Post group’s efforts to expand
its insurance operations now loom as major non-tariff barrier issues that will
have to be addressed, for starters, by the Obama administration, desirably from
its viewpoint with a little help from the Abe administration, in the 90-day
process to secure congressional consent to allow Japan to join the negotiations.
4 comments:
I wonder about the way the US manages to maintain its high tariffs on Japanese made cars. Any thoughts? These are real numbers, nes pa?
Martin:
The United States maintained its right to impose those auto tariffs after the Uruguay Round negotiations and does not have an FTA with Japan. FYI the US auto industry secured a five-year delay for the elimination of auto import tariffs under the KORUS FTA.
So the US also has tariffs against Korean vehicles? Interesting world we live in.
Martin:
In principle, each WTO member country or region (think, Taiwan) has uniform tariffs (or none) for imports from all WTO countries except from countries with which it has a free trade agreement or developing countries to which it provides preferential tariffs. US automakers secured 5 and 10 year delays for passenger cars and trucks respectively. Look here (http://www.uskoreacouncil.org/sites/default/files/files/Autos-fact-sheet-1.pdf)for more details.
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