Japan mulls FTA study with US, ready to resume talks with S. Korea
Kyodo | Tuesday April 3, 2007
Japan mulls FTA study with U.S., ready to resume talks with S. Korea
(Kyodo) — Japan will study the pros and cons of a free trade agreement with the United States and is ready to restart FTA talks with South Korea, Cabinet ministers said Tuesday following a deal Washington and Seoul struck Monday.
"We need to study advantages and problems (of an FTA with the United States) from a viewpoint of the entire people’s interests," economic and fiscal policy minister Hiroko Ota said at a press conference.
Japanese and U.S. business groups have urged the two countries to sign an FTA.
"We are ready to resume FTA negotiations, which have been put on hold since November 2004, at any time and will intensify our call on South Korea to restart the process at an early date," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.
Tokyo and Seoul suspended their FTA talks as Japan refused to open its market for agricultural products as South Korea had demanded.
Both South Korea and Japan are net food importers and the farm sector is a sensitive area for them. Seoul reached an FTA deal with the United States after 10 months of negotiations, but succeeded in excluding rice from its market opening.
For Japan, the liberalization of agricultural trade is considered a stumbling block to launching FTA negotiations with major farm exporters including the United States.
Ota said a government task force has been studying the feasibility of an FTA with the United States and will report its findings in the near future.
As for the impact of the U.S.-South Korea FTA, Ota said Japanese industries such as automakers and electric appliance makers will not be damaged severely from competition with South Korean rivals in the U.S. market, because Japan has an FTA with Mexico.
Mexico struck the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada in 1994. Japanese items exported to the U.S. from Mexico are generally tariff-free.
But the economic minister said Japan needs to "speed up" its FTA negotiations with trading partners so as not to be left out of movements by major trading powers to sign FTAs.
Shiozaki welcomed the FTA between South Korea and the United States, saying, "Japan expects the South Korean economy to expand further and contribute to the prosperity of the entire East Asian region in the mid- and long term."
