EU and Japan agree to work together to promote free trade and economic security
The agreement followed a meeting among European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa, and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. It comes just as Tokyo and Washington reached a new trade deal, which places 15 percent tariffs on Japanese cars and other goods imported into the US, down from an initial 25 percent.
The leaders agreed to launch a competitiveness alliance aimed at stepping up trade, economic security, and cooperation in innovation, energy, and other areas, according to a joint statement released by the EU. The leaders also supported a stable and predictable, rules-based, free, and fair economic order and reaffirmed the importance of Japan-EU cooperation to uphold a multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core, as well as with other multilateral cooperation efforts.
The EU and Japan also agreed to strengthen defense industry cooperation and to start talks on an information security agreement. Japan and the EU have been stepping up their security and defense cooperation amid growing global tensions and conflicts, including Russia's war on Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East, and increasingly assertive China's military activity in Asia, recognizing that challenges in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are inseparable.
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On July 12, Trump threatened to apply a 30 percent tariff on imports from the EU starting on August 1, after weeks of negotiations with the major US trading partners failed to reach a comprehensive trade deal. The EU had prepared countertariffs on 93 billion euros ($109 billion) of US goods in the event there was no deal, and Trump made good his 30 percent tariff threat. Some member states had also pushed for the bloc to use its most powerful trade weapon, the anti-coercion instrument, to target US services in the event of a no-deal.
