How a dispute over whaling could spur Japan’s exit from US Indo-Pacific trade pact: ‘Kishida has zero leeway’

A disagreement over whaling threatens to overshadow Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to the United States later this week for talks with President Joe Biden, with some observers saying Tokyo should be ready to “walk away” from a critical trade initiative in protest at the strong-arm tactics of its ally.

The Office of the US Trade Representative has been pressuring Japan to accept a passage critical of whaling in the charter for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) – a 14-nation trade deal unveiled by Biden in Tokyo last year to counter China’s growing influence in Asia and the Pacific – according to an August 10 report by the Financial Times newspaper.

“I have no idea why the US is insisting on this clause at this point, when most of the main issues have already been agreed and when the question of commercial whaling was effectively solved when Japan pulled out of the International Whaling Commission in 2019,” said Michael Cucek, a professor of international relations at the Tokyo campus of the US’ Temple University, referring to the organisation that effectively banned whaling in the late 1980s.

Washington’s criticism of whaling is even more perplexing given the relatively low importance the Biden administration is attaching to the IPEF – a “face-saving gesture” to make up for the US pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in 2017 under former president Donald Trump, Cucek said.