Former Japanese lawmaker: Japan only pretending to negotiate US bilateral trade deal

by Dramelin 4:00 AM 0 comments

Why Japan thinks the US may come back to the TPP    10 Hours Ago | 02:24 Japan was expecting the U.
to return to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) fold and was only "pretending" to negotiate a bilateral deal, Kotaro Tamura, a Milken Institute Asia Fellow, told CNBC on Tuesday.
"Japan`s prime minister and government paid a tremendous amount of political capital to make [the TPP] happen.
They won`t waste it," said Tamura, who was a Japanese senator from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe`s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2002-2010.
"Of course they were pretending to talk about a free trade agreement (FTA), but bottom in the heart, they will be welcoming the U.
back," he told CNBC`s "The Rundown" on Tuesday.
"It`s not about FTA.
It`s buying time, but in reality, they are looking for the U.
coming back to the pact.
" Abe reiterated in an interview with CNBC on Monday that Japan would continue to push for an ex-U.
President Donald Trump pulled the U.
out of the TPP, a broad 12-nation trade deal, which he claimed was a "disaster" that would hurt U.
Japan`s prime minister had initially said that the TPP would be "meaningless" without the U.
, but more recently, Japanese officials have seconded Australia`s calls for the other 11 members of the pact to proceed without the U.
Trump has expressed a preference for bilateral trade agreements, over multi-lateral ones, claiming he can negotiate better deals that way.