Japan and the European Union should agree on Thursday to a free trade pact that could be completed within months, after senior officials removed final snags to a political deal intended as a signal to U. S. President Donald Trump. “We ironed out the few…
Japan and the European Union should agree on Thursday to a free trade pact that could be completed within months, after senior officials removed final snags to a political deal intended as a signal to U. S. President Donald Trump.
“We ironed out the few remaining differences, ” European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said after a meeting on Wednesday with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should now sign the “political agreement” with EU institutional chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk on Thursday in Brussels. The three men will then head to a G20 summit in Hamburg, where the EU and Japan will urge Trump not to weaken U. S. free trade traditions.
Summit host Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, took aim at Trump on Wednesday, saying: “While we are looking at the possibilities of cooperation to benefit everyone, globalisation is seen by the American administration more as a process that is not about a win-win situation but about winners and losers.”
Japan, which lost out when Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade accord, and the EU, which has seen talks on a U. S. trade deal called TTIP lapse into limbo, both see their accord as striking a blow against a feared increase in nationalistic protectionism in world trade.
