Economics
As China Trade War Cools, Japan Braces for Its Clash With Trump
- Negotiators sit down for opening talks in Washington next week
- Abe doesn’t want to give U.S. better deal than Europe, Asia
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Japan is finally stepping into the ring for a fight it had managed to dodge for more than two years: Bilateral trade talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.
The world’s third-biggest economy has a lot at stake in the talks, which are expected to start next week in Washington just as the U.S.’s negotiations with China appear to be winding down. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is desperate to avoid tariffs or quotas on lucrative auto exports, while Trump wants to crack open Japan’s agricultural market and reduce a $60 billion trade deficit.