Trade trouble looms for Shinzo Abe as Trump looks to seal a US-Japan deal

William Pesek says the Japanese prime minister’s early friendliness with the US president failed to save the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, and he now faces pressure to strike a bilateral deal. Talk of access to US weapons technology may help divert Trump’s attention

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump shake hands during their summit meeting in New York on September 21. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 12:07pm, 3 Nov 2017Updated: 12:07pm, 3 Nov 2017

No world leader was more energetic in normalising Donald Trump’s shock win last year than Shinzo Abe. Nine days after the election, the Japanese prime minister was at New York’s Trump Tower pledging Japan’s allegiance. At the time, it appeared Abe’s savvy flattering of the US president-elect would position Tokyo to profit.

Chaos has reigned instead. Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pivotal element of Abenomics. The US$1 trillion infrastructure extravaganza Japan Inc wanted a piece of hasn’t materialised. Nor do Washington’s tax cuts look promising as Russia investigations and indictments fly. Trump’s itchy Twitter fingers towards North Korea have Japanese schoolchildren doing missile drills.

Now, Trump is coming to town, pushing a deal Tokyo is set on refusing: a bilateral trade framework.

Abe spent considerable political capital rallying his party around the TPP, only to see Trump renege. Don’t worry, Trump claims, America and Japan can negotiate a deal creating millions of high-paying jobs. Trump’s pitch betrays complete ignorance of why Japan joined Barack Obama’s regional pact.

Former US president Barack Obama speaks during a news conference at the White House in Washington in October 2015. The Obama administration pushed hard for the Trans-Pacific Partnership near the end of his term but the US ultimately withdrew from the deal under his successor, Donald Trump. Photo: AP

Democratic alliance of the US, India, Japan and Australia wants to work with China – not contain it

The TPP is more a geopolitical punctuation mark aimed at China. Joining this 12-nation bloc, accounting for 40 per cent of the global economy and based on Western values, was Abe’s China insurance policy. That’s why Obama’s team gave Japan latitude to protect sectors like agriculture. Abe’s November 17 sprint to New York was a last-ditch effort to keep the US in the pact.