After fierce opposition from Tokyo, and concerns from US officials, the Biden administration dropped its efforts to press Japan to include anti-whaling provisions in its Indo-Pacific trade agreement.
The US Trade Representative had been pressuring Japan to accept language against whaling in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework trade agreement the administration is currently negotiating with thirteen Indo-Pacific nations. Three people who are familiar with this move say that USTR, a government agency headed by Katherine Tai has changed its mind due to the opposition. Last week, it was reported Tokyo objected strongly to IPEF including anti-whaling terminology. One senior Japanese official stated Tokyo would be prepared to abandon IPEF, if the US did not back down. This would have dealt Washington a major blow and destroyed a deal that Washington hoped will act as a counterweight against China.
As President Joe Biden is preparing to host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol at Camp David for an historic Trilateral Summit this Friday, the decision to abandon pressure on Japan has been made.
Senior officials from other parts of Biden’s administration, such as the White House, and the state department, were also against the USTR plan to include antiwhaling language into IPEF. They feared it would compromise the deal and cause a rift between Japan and the United States, which is arguably their most important ally in Asia.
The White House and USTR made no comment. Noriyuki Schikata, Kishida’s spokesperson, didn’t comment on the current status of the talks, but did say that it would “be constructive for all IPEF members to concentrate on many forward-looking agreement on positive aspects of negotiations”.
The spat with Tokyo over whaling was a thorn on the side of the otherwise excellent US bilateral relations with Japan.
“IPEF’s removal from the agenda is a triumph of diplomatic good sense,” said Christopher Johnstone. He is a Japan specialist at CSIS and a former senior White House official and Pentagon official. “Japan is a key partner in IPEF, which is important for US interests. A focus on whaling could have put that partnership at risk.”
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a commercial whaling moratorium in 1986. Japan, until it withdrew in 2019, circumvented the IWC moratorium by using a clause that allowed whales to die for “scientific” research purposes. This sparked criticism from conservationists as well as other IWC members.
Japan only allows whales to enter its exclusive economic zones since it left the IWC. In recent years, the whaling industry in Japan has been struggling without subsidies and a change in public taste.