Japan S Trade Policy

This book explores the process of policy-making in Japan providing a valuable insight for academics and policy-makers into Japan's massive trade surpluses and the resultant mounting international pressure to resolve the situation.

This study provides up-to-date coverage of the most important domestic and external political and economic influences on Japanese trade policy, as well as the evolutionary dynamics of that policy in the post-war period.

On October 7, 2019, after six months of formal negotiations, the United States and Japan signed two agreements intended to liberalize bilateral trade. One, the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement (USJTA), provides for limited tariff reductions and quota expansions to improve market access. The other, the U.S.-Japan Digital Trade Agreement, includes commitments pertaining to digital aspects of international commerce, such as crossborder data flows. These agreements constitute what the Trump and Abe Administrations envision as "stage one" of a broader trade liberalization negotiation, which the two leaders first announced in September 2018. The two sides have stated their intent to continue negotiations on a more comprehensive deal after these agreements enter into force. Congress has an interest in U.S.-Japan trade agreement negotiations given congressional authority to regulate foreign commerce and the agreements' potential effects on the U.S. economy and constituents. USJTA is to reduce or eliminate tariffs on agriculture and some industrial goods, covering approximately $14.4 billion ($7.2 billion each of U.S. imports and exports) or 5% of bilateral trade. The United States is to reduce or eliminate tariffs on a small number (241) of mostly industrial goods, while Japan is to reduce or eliminate tariffs on roughly 600 agricultural tariff lines and expand preferential tariff-rate quotas for a limited number of U.S. products. The United States framed the digital trade commitments as "gold standard," with commitments on nondiscriminatory treatment of digital products, and prohibition of data localization barriers and restrictions on cross-border data flows, among other provisions. The stage one agreement excludes most other goods from tariff liberalization and does not cover market access for services, rules beyond digital trade, or nontariff barriers. Notably, the agreement does not cover trade in autos, an industry accounting for one-third of U.S. imports from Japan. Japan's decision to participate in bilateral talks came after President Donald Trump threatened to impose additional auto tariffs on Japan, based on national security concerns. Prior to the Trump Administration, the United States negotiated free trade agreements (FTAs) that removed virtually all tariffs between the parties and covered a broad range of trade-related rules and disciplines in one comprehensive negotiation, driven in significant part by congressionally mandated U.S. negotiating objectives. Nontariff issues often require implementing legislation by Congress to take effect, and Congress has typically considered implementing legislation for past U.S. FTAs through expedited procedures under Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). The Trump Administration, however, plans to put the stage one agreements with Japan into effect without action by Congress. The Administration plans to use delegated tariff authorities in TPA to proclaim the USJTA market access provisions, while the U.S.-Japan Digital Trade Agreement does not appear to require changes to U.S. law and is being treated as an Executive Agreement. Japan's Diet (the national legislature) ratified the pact in December 2019. The Administration expects the agreements to take effect in early 2020, with negotiations on the second stage of commitments to begin within four months.

In a few years, the United States has gone from worrying about Japan's economic might to worrying about its meltdown. The rise and fall of America's 'results-oriented' trade policy towards Japan captures this turnaround. John Kunkel traces this Japan policy to a crisis in the institutions, laws and norms of the US trade policy regime in the first half of the 1980s. This arose from the erosion of America's post-war international economic dominance (especially vis-à-vis Japan) and the unintended consequences of Reaganomics. The crisis in turn led to the progressive ascendancy of a coalition of 'hardliners' over 'free traders' after 1985. Kunkel combines research in economics, politics and history - including interviews with key policy-makers - to illuminate this important case study of American trade policy. His book offers theoretical insights and practical lessons on the forces shaping US trade policy at the start of the twenty-first century.

Closing a critical gap in the literature examining the strained relationship between the U.S. and Japan, this book synthesizes the economic, political, historical, and cultural factors that have led these two nations, both practitioners of capitalism, along quite different paths in search of different goals. Taking an objective, multidisciplinary approach, the author argues that there is no single explanation for Japan's domestic economic or foreign trade successes. Rather, his analysis points to a systemic mismatch that has been misdiagnosed and treated with inadequate corrective measures. This systemic mismatch in the corporate strategy, economic policies, and attitudes of the U.S. and Japan created and is perpetuating three decades of bilateral economic frictions and disequilibria. As long as both the U.S. and Japan deal more with symptoms than causes, bilateral problems will persist. This book's unique analysis will encourage a better understanding on both sides of the Pacific of what has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen if corporate executives and policymakers in the two countries do not better realize the extent of their differences and adopt better corrective measures.

The balancing of competing interests and goals will have momentous consequences for Japan—and the United States—in their quest for economic growth, social harmony, and international clout. Japan and the United States face difficult choices in charting their paths ahead as trading nations. Tokyo has long aimed for greater decisiveness, which would allow it to move away from a fragmented policymaking system favoring the status quo in order to enable meaningful internal reforms and acquire a larger voice in trade negotiations. And Washington confronts an uphill battle in rebuilding a fraying domestic consensus in favor of internationalism essential to sustain its leadership role as a champion of free trade. In Dilemmas of a Trading Nation, Mireya Solís describes how accomplishing these tasks will require the skillful navigation of vexing tradeoffs that emerge from pursuing desirable, but to some extent contradictory goals: economic competitiveness, social legitimacy, and political viability. Trade policy has catapulted front and center to the national conversations taking place in each country about their desired future direction—economic renewal, a relaunched social compact, and projected international influence. Dilemmas of a Trading Nation underscores the global consequences of these defining trade dilemmas for Japan and the United States: decisiveness, reform, internationalism. At stake is the ability of these leading economies to upgrade international economic rules and create incentives for emerging economies to converge toward these higher standards. At play is the reaffirmation of a rules-based international order that has been a source of postwar stability, the deepening of a bilateral alliance at the core of America's diplomacy in Asia, and the ability to reassure friends and rivals of the staying power of the United States. In the execution of trade policy today, we are witnessing an international leadership test dominated by domestic governance dilemmas.

This book describes and analyzes Japan’s foreign trade policies from 1945 onwards and considers the part they played in the economic expansion of the 1960s, the oil-shock of the 1970s, and consequent growth, with the leadership of MITI and the response of industry.