Japanese Politicians Say US Could Have Used TPP to Lead China Away From IP Abuses

Because the U.S. has stepped away from a leadership role in free trade, Japan has had to step in, Japanese politicians told an audience at the Brookings Institution. That's why it worked to save the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the Trump administration pulled out. Politicians and experts speaking on the panel on the future of U.S.-Japan trade said the TPP would have been more effective for dealing with China's intellectual property rights violations than the course the U.S. is on now.

Akihiko Tanaka, president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Japan, noted at the May 2 event that the U.S. is sending a high-powered delegation to Beijing this week. "Most of the things the Trump administration wants are included in TPP," he said. The hope is that China would eventually have agreed to the rules laid out in TPP in order to get access to Asian and Western Hemisphere participants' markets at lower tariffs. "It's rather moot to think back on what could have been," he added.

Koichiro Gemba, a member of Japan's House of Representatives, said the TPP's rules are even more important because the World Trade Organization is not functioning well. He criticized the U.S. for blocking appointments at the WTO, saying it is partly responsible for the trade body's dysfunction.

Akira Amari, a member of Japan's House of Representatives, was the country's chief negotiator for the TPP. He said if the U.S. were to join the TPP-11, that would be more beneficial than trying to begin negotiations on a bilateral deal with Japan. He said it would probably take between five and 10 years to reach agreement on a bilateral free trade agreement, and during that time, TPP countries are selling beef to Japan at a 9 percent tariff, while U.S. producers face a 38.5 percent tariff.

But despite occasional comments by President Donald Trump that the U.S. might join (see 1804120027), the overall message from Washington is against multilateral trade deals. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, speaking this week to a business audience, said, "I agree with the president completely that bilateral deals are far more effective than these multilateral deals. They're enforceable in a way the others are not" (see 1805010042).

Ryan Hass, a Brookings Institution scholar on China, said, "I'm very confident that the United States will join TPP. I just can't tell you when."

Amari expressed many anxieties about China's industrial policies, just as Trump does. He said that China welcomes investment from foreign firms, but it requires that profits made in China be reinvested there rather than returned to corporations' home headquarters. "The world is using capital, people and technology to make China more rich," he said through an interpreter.