The Sound Of Economics

**Bruegel senior fellow André Sapir welcomes Tamotsu Nakamura, dean of Kobe University’s Graduate School of Economics, and Maria Åsenius, head of cabinet to European trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström, for a discussion of the EU-Japan economic partnership in the context of heightening global trade tensions.** The EU and Japan have signed a landmark trade deal this summer that will create the world’s largest open economic area. The economic partnership agreement will be the biggest bilateral trade agreement the EU has ever signed, permitting not only the dropping of tariffs but also regulatory cooperation, as well as a special focus to promote the interests of SMEs.    The trade-positive nature of this agreement goes against the grain of the numerous challenges made to the global multilateral system in recent times, best represented by the tariffs and counter-tariffs imposed by the US and China upon one another. To explore how this accord suits the EU and Japan, in terms of both the domestic and intern