US envoy to Japan calls for economic treaty
Financial Times
US envoy to Japan calls for economic treaty
By David Pilling in Tokyo
May 24 2006
Washington’s ambassador to Japan on Wednesday added his voice to those calling for closer economic integration between the world’s two biggest economies, though he stopped short of formally proposing talks aimed at the conclusion of a bilateral trade agreement.
Thomas Schieffer, speaking in Tokyo, said: “Combining our economies [of 427m people] would allow each of us to grow in a way that is hard to imagine today.”
The ambassador’s words follow a recommendation this week by the US-Japan Business Council to “initiate a comprehensive, high-level economic integration agreement, defined as Free Trade Agreement-Plus”.
The council said it recognised that it would not be practical to start talks this year, given that both countries were negotiating bilateral trade agreements with several other countries.
However, it urged Washington and Tokyo to “start the process by making the political commitment to begin formal study of such an agreement this year”.
Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister, is due to visit Washington next month on what is likely to be his last official US trip before he steps down in September.
Trade officials and diplomats said there was little prospect of concluding a US-Japan trade agreement in the near future, given Japan’s reluctance to open its agricultural sector to American farmers. That was a “deal-breaker”, said one official, particularly given the requirement that any agreement be ratified by the US Congress.
Mr Schieffer said the free flow of trade and investment between the two countries was mutually beneficial, creating jobs and new products. He praised Japanese car manufacturers for bringing 55,000 jobs and $28bn of investment to the US.
Separately, Mr Schieffer addressed the issue of Mr Koizumi’s annual pilgrimage to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, where millions of war dead, including some convicted war criminals, are venerated.
The ambassador said he believed the Japanese leader was trying to find a way of paying respects to the war dead without honouring the cause of the war itself.
“I think Japan has not quite figured out how to do that,” he said. But he did not believe that Mr Koizumi nor Shinzo Abe, a possible successor, were “radicals who were embracing rightwing philosophies”.
Last month, Henry Hyde, chairman of the US House of Representatives international relations committee, wrote a letter to Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, saying that if Mr Koizumi wanted to address a joint session of Congress during his visit in June, he should pledge not to visit Yasukuni. Japan denies that Mr Koizumi has made any such request.
Some US officials have voiced concern that Mr Koizumi’s continual visits to Yasukuni have brought Sino-Japan relations to an uncomfortable impasse.
