Japan and the United States on Friday agreed on a deal paving the way for Tokyo to join talks on an Asia-Pacific free trade agreement. The deal brings Japan closer to entering talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia and New Zealand hope to finish this year. "I think Japan's national interests are protected under this U.S.-Japan agreement," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters on Friday after a meeting with Cabinet ministers. Abe, who took office in December, is making the regional free trade pact a keystone of his strategy to open Japan's economy and spur long-sought growth, according to a report of Reuters. President Barack Obama's administration sees the TPP as part of U.S. economic rebalancing toward Asia. "Having Japan in TPP and contributing to the high standards of TPP is good for the U.S., it's good for the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a whole and its very good for the multilateral trading system itself," Mike Froman, White House international economic affairs adviser, told reporters in Washington. With the entry of Japan, the world's third-largest economy and fourth-largest U.S. trading partner, the final TPP pact is expected to cover nearly 40 percent of global economic output and one-third of all world trade, Froman said.
