President Obama will host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for an official state visit this week, with Washington and Tokyo announcing an expanded security cooperation Monday but still facing hurdles in Mr. Obama’s long-sought goal of a major free-trade agreement.
Mr. Abe will arrive Tuesday at the White House for a ceremonial greeting on the South Lawn, followed by an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Obama, a joint news conference and a state dinner for nearly 300 guests.
White House aides said the two leaders will discuss the new defense cooperation, North Korea, climate change and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that Mr. Obama views as the centerpiece of his six-year-old effort to “rebalance” U.S. interests toward the Asia-Pacific region.
“This visit reinforces both the U.S.-Japan alliance, but also the U.S. commitment to the security and stability of the Asia-Pacific region more broadly,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy White House national security adviser, noting that Mr. Obama will host a state visit for Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year. “This helps set the tone for a year of very active engagement between the United States and the Asia-Pacific region.”
But White House aides said Mr. Obama and Mr. Abe aren’t likely to reach agreement yet on the TPP, with tariffs on autos and beef remaining as sticking points in the talks.
“We’re not there yet to a final deal,” said Caroline Atkinson, deputy national security adviser for international economics. “More work is needed.”
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Mr. Abe will deliver a speech Wednesday to Congress, which is debating whether to grant Mr. Obama authority to speed negotiations on the TPP. Tensions between the president and liberal lawmakers in his party reached new heights over the free-trade agreement last weekend, as Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio accused the administration of “muzzling” lawmakers from discussing the pact with their constituents.
“Your administration has deemed the draft text of the agreement classified and kept it hidden from public view, thereby making it a secret deal,” they wrote in a letter to the president. “It is currently illegal for the press, experts, advocates, or the general public to review the text of this agreement.”
The senators were referring to comments by Mr. Obama late last week in which he said the criticism that “gets on my nerves the most is the notion that this is a ’secret’ deal.”
“Every single one of the critics who I hear saying, ’This is a secret deal,’ or send out emails to their fundraising base saying they’re working to prevent this ’secret’ deal, can walk over today and read the text of the agreement,” Mr. Obama said. “There’s nothing secret about it.”
The senators told Mr. Obama that although lawmakers are allowed to read the text of the agreement, “you neglected to mention [to the public] that we are prohibited by law from discussing the specifics of that text in public.”
“Members of Congress should be able to discuss the agreement with our constituents and to participate in a robust public debate, instead of being muzzled by classification rules,” they wrote. “We respectfully suggest that characterizing the assessments of labor unions, journalists, Members of Congress, and others who disagree with your approach to transparency on trade issues as ’dishonest’ is both untrue and unlikely to serve the best interests of the American people.”
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’Good for American workers’
The administration is treating the TPP documents as classified information, preventing lawmakers from responding in detail to Mr. Obama’s claims about the pact’s perceived benefits for American workers.
An official with the AFL-CIO, which opposes the trade deal, said the administration should be more transparent about the draft language if the president wants to win over more Democrats.
“American workers who have lost their jobs due to trade deals are understandably skeptical,” said spokesman Eric Hauser. “The best way to regain workers’ confidence is to release the text, not scold the critics.”
The president is making the argument to his wary liberal base that TPP will open up the Japanese market for U.S. auto manufacturers.
“You go out on the street right now and you look at all the cars that are passing by, you’ll see Hondas,” Mr. Obama told a progressive conference on Thursday. “You’ll see Toyotas. You’ll see Nissans. But when you travel to Tokyo, you don’t see Fords. You don’t see Chevys. You don’t see Chryslers. Why wouldn’t we want to rewrite those rules so there is some reciprocity and we can start opening up the Japanese market? That would be good for American workers.”
The president also signaled Friday that he’s not willing to address currency manipulation in the TPP, a move that would win more support in both parties for trade-promotion authority. Currency manipulation is a form of trade protectionism, and several participants in the TPP talks, including Japan, have used undervalued currency to gain an advantage.
“We’re still working with members of Congress who are interested in the currency issue to potentially do something parallel to TPP,” Mr. Obama said Friday. “But is not a good idea, and not plausible, for us to get an effective currency provision inside of TPP” that other nations and the Department of the Treasury and Federal Reserve “could accept.”
Expanded defense coverage
Lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation in February that would punish countries for artificially manipulating their exchange rates to gain a global trading advantage.
Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Ways and Means, has said that the TPP talks give the U.S. important leverage in correcting the imbalances.
“Not including currency obligations in TPP is essentially asking us to accept the status quo when it comes to currency manipulation,” Mr. Levin said earlier this month. Given the huge effect that currency manipulation has on trade flows, the TPP presents an important opportunity to improve the status quo for the United States.”
Mr. Levin said Japan “goes through spells of intervening heavily and spells where it does not intervene at all,” despite an ongoing “quiet dialogue” with U.S. Treasury officials.
The new defense guidelines between the U.S. and Japan will be announced Monday in New York by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Secretary of State John F. Kerry with their Japanese counterparts. The two nations are expected to expand the areas of defense cooperation under new guidelines that cover Japan’s outlying islands.
The Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are at the center of a territorial dispute with China, are to be included among Japan’s islands covered for defense.
Mr. Carter reported progress in talks with Japan earlier this month on the new defense cooperation and on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free-trade deal that Mr. Obama is trying to conclude with 11 other nations in the Pacific rim.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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