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US COMMERCE Secretary Penny Pritzker has been dispatched to Tokyo to pile pressure on Japan to open its markets.
The billionaire trade minister is tasked with reinvigorating negotiations for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
“It is time for all of us to be bold,” she told gathered US and Japanese corporate bosses yesterday.
“Incremental steps will not lead us to the high-standard outcome that we all agreed to pursue when we joined the negotiations.”
Washington is worried that Japan is getting cold feet over the deal, which aims to deregulate Pacific economies and open them to unlimited foreign investment.
Japanese MPs have been pushing to exempt rice, wheat, beef, pork, dairy products, sugar and starch from a removal of tariffs.
Tokyo is also worried that dropping tariffs on foreign cars could hit its automobile industry hard.
Closer to home, Ms Pritzker is already deeply unpopular with teachers in Chicago.
While on the city’s education board she funnelled taxpayers’ cash to her own family’s Hyatt hotel chain while starving schools of funds.
She came to Tokyo with a number of US business representatives in tow, including several from firms desperate for a slice of Japan’s 30-trillion-yen (£185 billion) healthcare market.
Agreement between Japan and the US on the basic elements of TPP is considered vital before the smaller economies of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam sign up.
Known by diplomats as the “anyone but China” deal since Beijing has not been invited to join negotiations, TPP aims to lock other Pacific countries into a neoliberal market model.
It also seeks to remove state regulation of economic activity and revise patent law to prevent countries offering cheap generic versions of medicines which big pharmaceutical firms could sell for higher prices.
China would then be presented with a “take it or leave it” finished treaty and forced to choose between opening its huge public sector to foreign firms or being shut out of the world’s biggest free-trade zone.
