Tokyo
\nUS President Donald Trump vowed on Monday to push for a free and balanced trade partnership with Japan after decades of \u201cmassive trade deficits\u201d but said relations with close ally Tokyo were \u201cbetter than we have ever had\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States has suffered massive trade deficits at the hands of Japan for many, many years,\u201d Trump said at the start of a meeting with Japanese and US business leaders on the second day of a 12-day Asian trip that will focus on both trade and North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile programmes.<\/p>\n
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at the start of a working lunch with Trump, offered his \u201cheart-felt condolences\u201d for the victims of a gunman who massacred at least 26 worshippers at a church in Texas.<\/p>\n
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump, who earlier expressed grief for the victims, had no plans at this time to change the schedule for his 12-day Asian trip, which will also take him to Seoul, Beijing and Danang, Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Trump praised Japan for buying US military hardware, which he said was the \u201cbest military equipment in the world\u201d, but added that \u201cmany millions of cars are sold by Japan into the United States, whereas virtually no cars go from the United States into Japan\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want free and reciprocal trade but right now our trade with Japan is not free and it\u2019s not reciprocal and I know it will be and we\u2019ve started the process,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI have no doubt that it will be done in a quick and very friendly manner.\u201d Later, at the start of their formal talks, Trump told Abe the two sides were making \u201ctremendous progress\u201d on both trade and North Korea, the other focus of his trip.<\/p>\n
Trump also said Washington wants to make the United States the most attractive place to hire, invest and grow.<\/p>\n
Japan had a $69-billion trade surplus with the United States last year, according to the US Treasury Department. The United States was Japan\u2019s second biggest trade partner after China, while Japan was the United States\u2019 fourth largest goods export market in 2016.<\/p>\n
Japanese officials have countered US trade complaints by noting Tokyo accounts for a much smaller slice of the US<\/p>\n
deficit than in the past, while China\u2019s imbalance is bigger.<\/p>\n
In a second round of economic talks in Washington last month, US Vice President Mike Pence and Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso, who doubles as deputy premier, failed to bridge differences on thorny trade issues.<\/p>\n
The two sides remain at odds over how to frame future trade talks, with Tokyo pushing back against US calls to discuss a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA).<\/p>\n
Trump also said that an Indo-Pacific trade framework would produce more in trade that the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact pushed by his predecessor but which he announced Washington would abandon soon after he took office.<\/p>\n
\u201cTPP was not the right answer,\u201d he said, adding he knew not everyone in his audience agreed. \u201cWe will have much bigger trade with the way we are doing it right now and it will be a much less complex situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 11 remaining nations in the TPP, to which Japan\u2019s Abe is firmly committed, are edging closer to sealing a comprehensive free trade pact without the United States.<\/p>\n
The United States has also complained about Japan\u2019s safeguard mechanism on US frozen beef imports, which imposes higher tariffs if quarterly imports rise more than 17 percent from the previous year. Sources have told Reuters that Tokyo will propose changes to the system to reduce US pressure.<\/p>\n
Trump met Emperor Akihito, exchanging a handshake and nodding, before his lunch and talks with Abe. He will also meet relatives of Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago by North Korean agents to help train spies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo US President Donald Trump vowed on Monday to push for a free and balanced trade partnership with Japan after decades of \u201cmassive trade deficits\u201d but said relations with close ally Tokyo were \u201cbetter than we have ever had\u201d. \u201cThe United States has suffered massive trade deficits at the hands of Japan for many, many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9588,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9586\/revisions\/9588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}