Reports
Reports

The 2010 Yokohama APEC meeting served as a watershed for the changes in APEC’s institutional norms and politics on Japan’s trade policy. While APEC’s basic norms such as dialogue- rather than negotiation-oriented approach remained almost unaltered, it was set as a basic framework for supporting the eventual formation of regional trading blocs such as the Free Trade Agreement of Asia Pacific (FTAAP), a discriminatory and ruled-based arrangement. This would mean the abandonment of its long-cherished norm such as “open regionalism”. The debate on the treatment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement as the host nation propelled a substantial divide between agricultural protectors and trade liberalization supporters in various Japanese societies, even within the ruling Democratic Part of Japan. The process towards the decision to consider the full participation in TPP the following year, despite of the TPP membership including big agricultural exports such as the United States, reveals a greater dilemma, the degree of which Japan never experienced before. This seminar attributes these changes to the external structural transformations such as the greater influence of US which has pursued more serious regional engagement in pursuit of FTAAP and TPP and Japan’s growing tensions against China and, later, Russia over the long-disputed islands, which compelled Japan to realize the need to reestablish closer relations with the United States.

Supported by ：

Keio University, Kyoto University, Ritsumeikan University,
The University of Tokyo, Waseda University