TPP trade pact meaningless without US: Japan

The Dollar Business Bureau

Amid the US President-elect Donald Trump’s continuous rhetoric to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday said the pan-Pacific free trade deal would become meaningless without the US’s participation.

Speaking to the reporters at the gathering of TPP leaders in Lima on Saturday, Abe said there was no discussion at the meeting with respect to other members’ attempt to put the TPP into effect without the United States.

"The TPP would be meaningless without the United States," Abe told reporters in Buenos Aires.

Trump on Monday released a video, underlining the actions he would take on his first day in office on January 20, which included his withdrawing the United States from the pan-Pacific free trade deal.

Last week, Abe met Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss bilateral economic cooperation and a decades-old territorial row and stressed that he envisaged to resolve the island dispute with Russia under his leadership.

"This is the problem that cannot be solved without the relationship of trust between leaders. I will be directly communicating with President Putin and make progress one solid step at a time" Abe said.

Japan and Russia have been involved in the territorial row over the chain of western Pacific islands, which was seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War Two. This has hit the bilateral ties between the two neighbours since, resulting in a formal peace treaty between Tokyo and Moscow.