President Donald J. Trump meets Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a Pull-Aside meeting at the Centre de Congrés Bellevue Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019, in Biarritz, France, to announce a broad agreement on trade negotiations. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
While over twenty Democratic candidates travel Iowa, eating corn dogs and delivering stump speeches to voters, President Trump has used the power of incumbency to do something none of them is capable of. Trump has inked an in-principle trade deal with Japan in which all of America’s corn surplus would be bought up. The Wall Street Journal reports:
President Trump said Sunday the U.S. and Japan had reached a trade deal “in principle” that would pave the way for more U.S. farm exports to Japan, while dropping the threat of increased U.S. tariffs on Japanese cars.
“We’ve been working on a deal with Japan for a long time,” Mr. Trump said at an impromptu event at the Group of Seven world leaders summit, where he was joined for a second time that day by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He said as part of the deal, Japan had agreed to buy a significant portion of the U.S.’s corn surplus.
The U.S. automobile tariffs, which Japanese officials wanted to see reduced, will stay in place, Mr. Trump said, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said other U.S. tariffs would be dropped.
Mr. Trump said he expected the leaders to sign the deal next month, around the time of the United Nations General Assembly.
Mr. Abe said there was still “some remaining work that has to be done at the working level” but that the two sides had reached a consensus on the core issues of agricultural and industrial trade.
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