Japan’s New Trade Strategy Focuses on Supply Chain Resilience and Trade Liberalization

Since the inauguration of the U.S Trump administration in January 2017, Japan's trade strategies have been shifting from trade liberalization to protectionism, emphasizing the strengthening of supply chains. The Kishida cabinet, which was launched in October 2021, is strengthening economic cooperation with the United States through bilateral dialogue as well as multilateral cooperation frameworks such as IPEF. It also enacted the Economic Security Promotion Act in May 2022, and strengthened industrial policies for strategic industries such as the semiconductors. However, the Japanese government's new trade strategy is not limited to supply chain strengthening measures and industrial policies. It is aiming to take the lead in digital trade, which is a new trade issue, and bolster its leadership in CPTPP. This brief is structured as follows. In the following section we will examine Japan’s new trade strategy in terms of supply chain resilience, focusing on industrial policies represented by reshoring policy and national semiconductor strategy, and supply chain policies of critical materials outlined in the Economic Security Promotion Act enacted in May 2022. And we look at bilateral coopera-tion between the U.S and Japan, and key negotiation agenda on supply chains at the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). The third section reviews the Japan’s trade liberalization strategy focused on the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), and Digital Trade Agreements. In particular, we derived the direction of Japan’s free trade policy through an analysis of the characteristics of the CPTPP as a 21st-century trade norm, and a comparative analysis of major regulations related to e-commerce in the CPTPP, US-Japan Digital Trade Agreement, and RCEP.