Grassley Says Japan Trade Negotiations Could Be Completed by Year's End

Canadian farmers have gained an advantage over U.S. competitors in exporting to Japan because of the U.S. decision to leave the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters on March 6. "It's really going to hurt, " he said. So moving quickly on a U.S.-Japan trade agreement is a necessity, he said, and he thinks there is a chance one could be concluded before the end of the year. "They're willing to sit down and negotiate ... along the lines of what they had agreed with the United States as part of TPP," he said. "If that's the context, except for maybe rice, that might be a fairly easy thing to negotiate."

This year is also the time to ratify the new NAFTA, and a reporter asked Grassley if he, like Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, might see a way to revise the biologics exclusivity period that has become a stumbling block for many Democrats. Grassley said, as he has repeatedly, that he doesn't believe there's a way to do so without reopening negotiations. "To me, you gotta look at the overall thing. If somebody's against this just because of one small item -- you never get 100 percent of what you want," he said. U.S. Trade Representative Robert "Lighthizer never gets 100 percent of what he wants."

Grassley has previously said there's momentum in the Senate to give Congress some power to limit the president's ability to levy Section 232 tariffs (see 1902130049). In response to a question from International Trade Today, he said his staff is working to write a bill that "can get a massive amount of support" so that if there's a veto, they have enough votes to override it.

He said that process is still in initial conversations, but that they're finding more buy-in from Democrats than they might have expected. "We thought maybe [some Democrats] would have a view ... that because they like to have tools to counteract unfair trade practices, maybe more than Republicans do, that we might find some resistance. But I don't think we are finding that resistance."