Is the EU-Japan ‘trade deal’ real - or just a stunt?

There is much celebration in Brussels today about what’s being described as a EU-Japan trade deal, but for political rather than economic reasons. Donald Trump has arrived in Hamburg for the G20 summit where he finds himself cast as a wicked protectionist, at odds with a pro-free trade global order. To hammer home this point, the EU is claiming to have agreed a trade “deal” with Japan, with whom Mr Trump pulled out of talks when he abandoned Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership. At this stage, Tokyo gave precedence to Brussels – and today’s, erm, political agreement is the result.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, is already trying to use this to taunt Trump. ‘Some are saying the time of isolationism and disintegration is coming again,” he said, a clear reference to Trump. “We are demonstrating that this is not the case.’ For his part, Shinzo Abe has hailed ‘a major pillar in our economic growth under Abenomics’ – and ‘the birth of the world’s largest, free industrialised economic zone.’