Japan has long maintained a TRQ on leather footwear imports where it allows only a small amount of leather footwear imports (12 million pairs) to enter each year (total from all countries, not just United States) at an already high duty-rate of 21.6 per cent before imposing exorbitant duties that essentially deny entry to those imports, a letter by the three associations to Trump said.
Three US footwear industry bodies have urged President Donald Trump to eliminate the tariff-rate quota restricting exports of US-made and US-branded leather footwear to Japan as part of any final US-Japan Agreement on Reciprocal Trade.
Japan has refused to remove this barrier for long.
The CPTPP has aggravated this problem for US footwear manufacturers in the last few years.
The secondary duty rate is 30 per cent or 4,300 yen ($27.67) per pair, whichever is higher. Although this trade barrier has been listed in every US government National Trade Estimate since the report’s inception in 1988, Japan has refused to remove this barrier, the letter noted.
Japan’s TRQ on all leather footwear imports bars US footwear manufacturers and US brands from the Japanese market.
“To highlight the immensity of the trade barrier, please note that, in 2024, the United States, with a population of approximately 343 million people, permitted the import of 465 million pairs of leather footwear, or an average more than 1.3 pairs per every man, woman, and child in the United States. Japan, on the other hand, with a population of approximately 124 million people, allowed in only 12 million pairs of leather footwear, or an average of less than one pair for every ten men, women, or children. As such, the TRQ is filled every year by the end of January,” the letter said.
Over the last few years, US footwear companies have been put at an even bigger disadvantage in the Japanese footwear market as Japan agreed to allow increasing, and eventual duty-free, access for the countries that are party to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), it added.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
