Back in 1987 Donald Trump complained publically about the trade policies of Japan, even going as far as taking out a newspaper article pointing out that the country was putting up trade barriers. It actually can be pointed out that President Trump’s foreign trade policy is based around the rise of Japan out of the ashes after World War II and his grievance against the country’s protectionism and his idea that tariffs could resolve the issue. His approach to German, China and other countries have all followed the same pattern. The problem is, since those days global trade has expanded tremendously. Global trade of merchandise and services is now beyond $42 trillion. The global GDP in 2018 was $ 84.5 trillion, so we can see that global trade is enormous. Back in 1985, Global GDP was $30 trillion and global trade was $5 trillion. Things have become much more interconnected, which is why it is much easier to deal with countries on a multilateral basis.
President Trump though, has rejected the idea of multilateral deals as it would mean the United States might not be the dominant partner in the exchange so he prefers to go one on one. To that end, one of the first things he did was to pull out of the TPP which with the US, included eleven countries, including the US. Now it is only ten and we are excluded. The TPP was set up to exclude China and isolate the country for its bad behavior on the trade playing field. That seems all to have been forgotten. So it is then a bit ironic that the (Preliminary) trade deal we struck with Japan for better access to their agricultural markets is a copy of the TPP provisions. The deal however leaves out the largest volume of trade, that of autos ($51 billion worth of exports out a trade deficit of $67.6 billion they have with us.) Trump has given his word to Mr Abe of Japan that we won’t apply any import tariffs or import quotas while the two sides continue wider talks. I would also say that the $7.2 billion we gained access to are probably not going to be purchased from the United Sates in any case as we already sell Japan an inordinate percentage of the agricultural goods it has to import. So in effect, the trade deal was really largely symbolic.