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farmers, lobbyists pushed to make sure that an FTA with Japan would increase exports and help
ease the fears of Mexican farmers.
As leader of a minority government, Fox had to convince a skeptical legislature that the
FTA would be of genuine benefit to Mexico. With the struggling domestic economy, Fox’s
National Action Party had lost seats in the July 2003 election for the lower house of the Mexican
Congress. And with the National Confederation of Farmers backing the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico’s largest opposition party, no FTA could be ratified without
the support of the PRI and its farm base. From the outset, Fox maintained “If Japan doesn’t open
its markets to agricultural products there will be no free trade agreement.”
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The Politics of Pork
Formal negotiations began in November 2002 but progress remained slow through the
following summer. The major stumbling block was Mexico’s demand for removal of tariffs on
pork, which accounted for roughly 50 percent of Mexico’s agricultural exports to Japan in terms
of value. MAFF and LDP politicians backed by the farm lobby bitterly opposed such opening,
claiming that a surge in cheap imports would disrupt ongoing restructuring in the pork industry.
To some extent, this was true. In the early 1990s, there were 30,000 pig farmers with an average
of only 300 hogs each. That number has declined to only 9,000 farmers each raising 961 hogs per
year. With these farmers spread across all 47 prefectures, however, the LDP risked losing Diet
seats throughout rural Japan.
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By September 2003, the negotiations had become more tense. Japan had agreed to
remove tariffs on only 50 percent of the 485 products targeted by Mexico. MAFF Minister
Convention