A proposed international trade treaty involving Pacific nations including Japan could threaten the domestic auto recovery here and in other industrial Midwestern states if it isn't smartly negotiated, the Big Three U.S. auto companies and Ohio senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown said.
The treaty is called the TPP, or Trans-Pacific Partnership, and could involve 12 or more nations in an Asia-Pacific "Free Trade Area" including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. There's been talk that China could be included.
A sore point for industry is the longstanding resistance by Japan to exports of U.S. autos during decades that have seen dramatic expansions of Japanese auto exports and manufacturing in the U.S. One estimate from the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research said the auto trade deficit with Japan was 42 billion, about 67 percent of the total U.S trade deficit with Japan, in 2011.