The E.U.-Japan Trade Deal: What’s in It and Why It Matters
Quite the opposite." Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said the deal signified the creation of "the world’s largest free, advanced, industrialized economic zone."
Here’s what you need to know about the deal: The core of the agreement aims to increase the flow of Japanese cars to Europe and of European food to Japan.
Negotiators have refused to include whaling and logging in the talks, which has angered environmental groups — Greenpeace has characterized the deal as "a huge transfer of power from people to big business."
Ms. Malmstrom responded this week by saying organizations like Greenpeace would be opposed to "any trade agreement," ostensibly a criticism of the group’s stance against trade liberalization.
By JAMES KANTERJULY 6, 2017
BRUSSELS — The European Union and Japan announced a broad agreement on Thursday
that would lower barriers on virtually all the goods traded between them, a pointed challenge to President Trump on the eve of a summit meeting of world leaders in Germany.
Painting eyes on symbolic daruma dolls to mark agmnt at Ministers’ level on #EUJapan trade deal, in prep for summit https://t.co/0RHRXBZlfv pic.twitter.com/L7tQe8hdNA Even without rules on whales
and wood, the deal is the biggest bilateral trade agreement ever struck by the European Union, covering about a quarter of the global economy.
Together, the European Union and Japan would constitute a trading bloc of a size to rival
that created by the North American Free Trade Agreement, presently the world’s biggest free trade zone (and one that Mr. Trump wants to renegotiate).
Though the deal still needs further negotiation and approval before it can take effect, it represents
an act of geopolitical theater, a day before a Group of 20 summit meeting begins in Hamburg.
