Source: NY Times:
President Obama offered a toast to Empress Michiko and Emperor Akihito of Japan during a state dinner at the Imperial Palace. CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times
TOKYO — President Obama encountered setbacks to two of his most cherished foreign-policy projects on Thursday, as he failed to achieve a trade deal that undergirds his strategic pivot to Asia and the Middle East peace process suffered a potentially irreparable breakdown.
Mr. Obama had hoped to use his visit here to announce an agreement under which Japan would open its markets in rice, beef, poultry and pork, a critical step toward the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the proposed regional trade pact. But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was not able to overcome entrenched resistance from Japan’s farmers in time for the president’s visit.
Categories: Americas
The incompetent fool probably thought that governance and diplomacy were like eating a piece of pizza or falsely claiming to be a professor of constitutional law when he was, in fact, ‘an untenured instructor’ according to Hilary Clinton.
Whatever it is, it is still an improvement: He did not vomit on the Japanese Prime Minister (like George W. Bush did …)
Rafiq,
There is no improvement on anything. George W. Bush is a realist this one is a utopian. The world is not built on utopia but on reality.
Bush may have ‘vomited’ on the Japanese Prime Minister, he never kowtowed to any relic of medieval feudalism.