Japan and Mexico failed to agree on a cut in Japanese tariffs on exported Mexican chicken meat at talks in Paris Japanese officials said Thursday.
In talks that ended Wednesday, the two countries were negotiating specific tariff levels under their bilateral free-trade agreement, which went into effect last April. The FTA requires the tariffs be cut by at least 10 percent.
Mexico called for a substantial tariff cut above that minimum, but Japan wanted to limit the scale.
Without an agreement, the Japanese tariff will automatically fall from 11.9 percent to 10.7 percent on boneless chicken imports from Mexico and from 8.5 percent to 7.6 percent on chicken on the bone in fiscal 2006, which starts next April.
Chicken tariffs for later years will be negotiated in 2006, along with beef and citrus fruit tariffs.