Guiding Japan: Leadership needed to unify multipronged FTA strategy
Asahi Shimbun, 3 October 2005
Guiding Japan: Leadership needed to unify multipronged FTA strategy
By MANABU HARA, Senior Staff Writer
In his policy speech to the Diet last week, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi touched only lightly on Japan’s efforts toward promoting free trade. Yet free-trade agreements (FTAs) are crucial for the country’s economic prosperity. Japan has already reached such agreements with Mexico and four Asian countries.
As his speech demonstrated, Koizumi, like other leaders, displays little enthusiasm for free trade. Their lack of leadership impedes an integrated Asian FTA policy.
Japan has been reluctant from the start, fearing that free trade with foreign countries could further open its agricultural industry to outside competition. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has long enjoyed the strong support of farming lobby groups.
But Japan started to steer its country’s prow toward potential FTA partners in early 2000. The World Trade Organization was becoming more inefficient at dealing with trade issues, partly due to the increased number of member countries.
Yet opinions within the government differ from one ministry to the next.
The biggest obstacle to free trade was, and remains, the agriculture ministry. But the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Foreign Ministry have also been at odds over the issue.
The trade ministry has insisted on concluding a comprehensive FTA with ASEAN to counter the increasing influence of China in Asia. But the Foreign Ministry supports negotiating FTAs with separate countries one at a time, arguing that any pact with the region as a whole would inevitably be diluted and weak.
Japan has followed these two incoherent approaches simultaneously. Some officials are keen on free trade with China, while others say China is still too different from Japan in many aspects.
Japanese leadership was not, and is not, capable of solving conflicts over agricultural issues as well as reconciling these different positions. The FTAs agreed to so far are half-hearted at best.
