Source: MEATINGPLACE, 4/21/14
 
U.S. and Japanese government negotiators late last week failed to reach an agreement on opening Japan’s market more broadly to U.S. beef imports.

The negotiations were set to continue this week ahead of President Barack Obama’s trip to Japan on Thursday, when the administration was hoping to be able to announce successful trade agreements.

“We have spent the past several weeks working to narrow gaps with Japan. The round we just completed was focused but difficult. After more than 20 hours of negotiations, we continue to make progress, and we are now faced with a reasonable number of outstanding issues. These issues are important to both sides and considerable differences remain,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement released Friday.

According to The Yomiuri Shimbun news service, the talks are currently centered on reducing — but not eliminating — Japan’s current 38.5 percent tariff on U.S. beef exports.  The news agency reported tariffs were likely to remain at or above 9 percent.

For U.S. pork imports, Yomiuri Shimbun predicted the graduated tariff system that applies higher tariffs to lower priced pork products would likely be maintained, but the tariff rate of around 4.3 percent could be lowered.
“We have worked to be as creative as possible to address Japan’s political sensitivities, while pursuing the overall objective of achieving meaningful access to its market – a goal that all TPP partners share,” said Froman’s statement. “We look to Japan to make similar efforts.”

Acting Deputy USTR Wendy Cutler was expected to visit Japan today for talks with Hiroshi Oe, Japanese deputy chief TPP negotiator. The talks also cover dairy, rice, wheat, barley and sugar import tariffs.

Last week, five U.S. poultry and meat organizations sent Obama a letter supporting U.S. negotiators taking a tough stance against Japanese meat import restrictions.

“We appreciate that, in the latest round of talks in Tokyo on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, your representatives did not capitulate to Japan’s continuing attempts to maintain protectionist barriers to our products,” the groups said. “A bad precedent with Japan could lead to future TPP-acceding nations such as China demanding massive exemptions from tariff elimination in industrial and high-tech products. This would be a damaging outcome for a wide swath of our nation’s commerce, agricultural and otherwise.”

The American Meat Institute, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, North American Meat Association and the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council signed the letter.

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