Abe the 'firefighter' between Europe and U.S.
Japanese Prime Minister Abe was due to leave on April 22 for a long trip to Europe and America. This is the time of the year when Golden Week (a set of national holidays in late April to early May) starts and the Prime Minister is wasting no time in going around the world.
The mission is more complicated for Abe this year. He is going to chair the G20 summit at Osaka in June, and he needs to make it a successful one. The current emperor will abdicate by the end of April and his successor will be enthroned on May 1. The G20 summit will be the first international event for the new era called "Reiwa,", so the PM is under huge pressure to make the summit a success.
The key to doing so is to mend fences between Europe and the Trump Administration. The last summit in Buenos Aires in 2018 demonstrated that Trump was isolated from the other 19 states, especially over the issues of trade and tariffs. After a lengthy negotiation, that summit managed to deliver a communique without mentioning "fighting against protectionism."
U.S. President Donald Trump meets Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 30, 2018. /VCG Photo
The WTO ruling in March on the U.S. failing to stop state subsidies for Boeing again added some fuel to the fire. Abe has to be the firefighter and put down the current flames between Europe and the U.S. So the main mission for his visit to Europe and the United States is to make sure that both European and American leaders will not have another spat over trade and tariffs at Osaka and to stick to the line that was adopted in Buenos Aires.
This visit is also significant because Japan is now entering into the negotiation phase for the Japan-U.S. trade agreement. Both countries agreed in September last year that the negotiation will focus on the trade on goods in the first phase. The first round of negotiations which took place last week confirmed the September deal, but the U.S. is putting more pressure on Japan to open up the market for service trade and investment. If not, the U.S. may take some punitive measures to limit exports of Japanese automobiles. In order to prevent such harsh measures, PM Abe needs to convince President Trump to agree on a text to avoid using restrictive measures and respect free trade rules.
In so doing, PM Abe would use the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) as leverage. As in the case of CPTPP (TPP-11 without the United States), the lack of a trade agreement with Japan would undermine the businesses, especially the agricultural sector, in the United States. So, PM Abe will be visiting European capitals including Brussels to discuss not only the Osaka summit, but also the smooth implementation of the Japan-EU EPA and the ratification of the framework of Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA).
The Japan-EU SPA is based on the EPA but extended to more strategic issues including the environment, crisis management, counter-terrorism, development assistance, peacekeeping operations, science and technology cooperation, and so forth. Such a strategic partnership would provide an alternative to the Japan-U.S. alliance for Japan. Although the Japan-U.S. relationship is still the most important part of Japanese foreign policy, a Japan-EU alliance would create more room for maneuver.
If the Trump Administration behaves as it did at the G7 Summit in Canada and G20 Summit in Argentina, it might again be isolated from other 19 states in Osaka. However, President Trump will count on PM Abe for his personal relationship and expect that Abe will side with him. Nevertheless, PM Abe would have the ambition to use the summit as a forum for establishing international rules on free trade and high-tech security (including 5G networks) together with all G20 participating states, which include Russia and China. In order to achieve such goals, PM Abe wants to minimize the fuss over U.S. protectionism. His visit to Europe and the U.S. is extremely important for the success of the Osaka summit and fulfilling his ambitions.
(CGTN)
