But many nations involved are going to have to contribute as well in order to reach the result that will benefit all of us. The Round is not a favor that we are doing for the rest of the world. It is long past time to finish the Round. We cannot tolerate a situation where trade agreements languish for seven years. The world is moving too fast now.
Governments come and go, technologies change, and economies evolve in that amount of time.
The other order of business in Tokyo was the effort to agree on a new framework for negotiations with Japan on the sectoral and structural issues that have hampered our exports, and those of other nations, to Japan, and caused damage to what may be our most significant bilateral relationship. An agreement on a new framework was reached, only hours before the President left Tokyo. The President, and everyone who works for him, has always recognized that many factors contribute to our bilateral trade deficit with Japan. But beyond all that, Japan still represents a market that is dramatically less open than ours, and significantly less open that it should be, given the size of its economy and the state of its development. The relative absence of tariff barriers is less significant than the bewildering array of non-tariff barriers that make success in the Japanese market so hard to come by.