If you are a consumer who works at a general company to earn money and spend the money to purchase food to eat, you may be happy because no tariff means that cheaper imported goods will be in the market. For example, you can buy imported rice which is very cheap, instead of domestic rice. Rice isn't a good example if you are Japanese because, I personally believe, Japanese rice is the best rice in the world for Japanese....anyway, yes, if you are such a consumer, you can pay less to purchase the same amount of products. Are you happy with that?
How about if you are a farmer who is producing vegetable, fruits, and whatever. Do you think you are happy with TPP that allow more goods to be imported from other countries? Obviously, Japanese products are more expensive than those in other TPP member states. If there is no tariffs, such cheap products will be imported more and traded in the market. That means that you need to compete with more cheaper-goods. You may have to reduce price...maybe you can. You may need to reduce costs of your production...maybe you can. But, do you think you can win the cheapness of products imported from less-developed countries? I DON'T THINK SO.
Now, imported rice is levied with 777.7% tariff. This means that rice whose price in the original country is $100 will be at least $877.7 (100 + 777.7% of $100 as tariff).....sorry if my calculation is wrong.....'at least' because importers definitely put more price to benefit.
Japanese domestic rice is protected under such extremely high tariff. In other words, such thigh tariff is needed to protect Japanese rice. The tariff is high in order to protect Japanese rice. What happens if this tariff becomes 0%? Importers can import rice with the same price as the local market. Who wants to buy rice which is 8 times expensive as foreign rice? Maybe me, I love Japanese rice, so I would love to buy it, but not everyone. That means Japanese rice will be bought less, by hurting rice farmers. This is not only in the case of rice, but all other agricultural products.
Also, another problem is that even though deflation is a big problem in Japan, TPP would accelerate it. That cheaper goods are purchased more means that there will be more cheap goods and less expensive goods. Gradually, the cheap goods dominate the market, causing prices to decrease: deflation. Companies want to sell their products with higher price and benefit more. The problem of deflation is that they cannot productively benefit. They have to sell more and more to benefit in deflation.
There are still more problems with Japan joining TPP, but I cannot list all of them. I am not understanding all of them. I am just a college student who studied little about economics and can guess what is going to happen if Japan joins TPP. I don't know what the prime minister of Japan is thinking. As you may know, I am one of the protestants against TPP and am not just a consumer who simply seeks cheaper goods. I do not think that expected increase in exports will benefit more than supporters believe. Joining TPP, Japan will lose what it will never be able to regain. I am sad about the prime minister deciding without enough consideration and explanations to the public.
This is my summary of this event published by New York Times.
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