U.S. should be at center of CPTPP, Japanese foreign minister says

TOKYO -- The U.S. should return to the broad cross-Pacific free trade agreement it helped to forge, Japan's Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Saturday, as rising geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific make strengthening cooperation a priority.

"I know I'll be disliked for saying this, but it is the U.S. that shaped the TPP into its current form of strategic importance," Hayashi told a symposium in Tokyo, referring to the pact now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Washington had spearheaded the deal before then-President Donald Trump withdrew in 2017, in one of his first acts in office.