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We are having tough talks with the United States in the areas of agriculture and automobiles where we cannot make any easy concessions.

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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaking at a meeting of corporate executives and public policy experts on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks. (Mainichi Shimbun)

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Ok! So what else is new??

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Many posters on this forum insist the Japanese auto market is completely "open." if that's the case, then why would any "concessions" need to be made on it? Now there's food for thought for you.

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I can understand about the agriculture part....after promising not to join the tpp, gets elected then renegs his promise and says ok to tpp. LDP must have lost a lot of support from the farmers. As for cars, Japan has never been an open nation to trade with. The U.S. should just limit the number of cars imported from japan.

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US is demanding Japan increase tax on K car. I think most J car in US are made in US and contributing in US employments.

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@JeffLee

Interested in what you are saying I looked to see what kind of obstacles were being claimed, and I found this opinion in the Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131101/OPINION01/311010003

The opinion piece claims: (1) Foreign penetration is only 6% of market (2) Japanese are manipulating currency values

Concerning (1), what should be done? Set a percentage which must be met? I already know you don't agree with that.

Concerning (2), I am not aware of Japan being specified as a currency manipulating nation by the US.

Of course there are structural obstacles, but those include extremely narrow roads and tiny parking spaces the likes of which US drivers and cars are not used to seeing, higher gasoline prices, higher service costs for minority foreign cars, etc. which are not artificially created. (Are the cars supplied with a right hand drive? I don't know)

Finally there is distribution, whether cars appear in showrooms, and whether the salesmen give US cars a hard sell. Sorry I don't know how to evaluate that. But I do know that in the many US customers know ahead of time that they want a certain Japanese car and they don't need salesman to tell them that.

On the other hand virtually 100% of all non-open-software operating systems sold in both the US and Japan are US made ...

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