THE EUROPEAN UNION and Japan signed a free trade agreement on Tuesday that is due to come into effect next year, according to which the EU will exempt 99 percent tariffs on imports from Japan, and Japan will eliminate 94 percent of tariffs on imports from the EU in 15 years. Beijing News comments:

The EU-Japan free trade area is home to 8.6 percent of global population, and accounts for 28.4 percent of the global economy and 37.2 percent of world trade. The agreement, when implemented, will create a free trade area that will have a larger trade scale than that of the North America Free Trade Agreement.

The founding of the European Economic Community in 1992 prompted the United States to take the lead in establishing NAFTA with Canada and Mexico two years later. Likewise, the Donald Trump administration's embracing of trade protectionism has accelerated the formation of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement that had gone through 18 rounds of painful negotiations since 2013.

At the G7 meeting in July last year, the two sides said they would expedite negotiations on the agreement so as to sign it at an early date, and the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and its protectionist policies have prompted the EU and Japan to finalize their agreement.

Both Japan and the EU have been targeted by the Trump administration's protectionist tariffs. And the two sides have driven home the message that they are against the US' practices by declaring that they will adhere to the multilateral trade system together with the World Trade Organization and fight back against protectionism.

They called for improving the WTO's efficiency and reforming the negotiation, supervision and dispute settlement mechanism of WTO, and strengthening intellectual property rights protection.

On the same day the EU and Japan signed the agreement, US Vice-President Mike Pence praised Trump's trade policies in his speech marking the 115th anniversary of the Department of Commerce.

The signing of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement shows the West is further divided over trade.