Japan

Suga and Biden are expected to discuss how to strengthen the Indo-Pacific region and collaborate on countering China

Daniel Kritenbrink is a career Foreign Service officer who once served as senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Japan this week to meet with his counterpart and other officials for discussions on a range of issues including digital trade, an area analysts say is ripe for the two countries to address in trying to counter China’s influence.

“The U.S. and Japan now need to think bigger, broader, harder and in greater unison about how to maximize our collective impact on urgent regional and global challenges.”

The U.S.-Japan trade agreement fully complies with World Trade Organization rules, Tokyo said last week after facing questions from several countries in Geneva.

The congresswoman also lamented that “In this current campaign season, the Republicans love to claim that a Democrat is somehow too close to China or a socialist.”

Jeffrey Gerrish, who until last month was the deputy U.S. Trade Representative for Asia, Europe, the Middle East and industrial competitiveness, said the U.S. and China to date have been able to resolve a slew of issues at the technical level without resorting to their phase-one deal’s enforcement mechanism.

Mobile crane imports primarily come from U.S. allies that do not pose national security threats, providing domestic consumers access to top-of-the-line infrastructure equipment, U.S. crane companies and foreign governments have told the Trump administration.

Japan remains one of the few major non-U.S. economies that has not signed up to the European Union-led stopgap appeals arrangement at the World Trade Organization, arguing on Wednesday that any interim plan must be established with an eye toward a long-term solution.