Agricultural Protection Impact Of Trade Liberalization In Japan And The Japanese Government's Countermeasures

It is in 1995 that Japan joint the GATT became the member of WTO with the transition from GATT to WTO. As one of the main countries that recommend and push up the liberalization of trade, Japan is always making the principal of free trade as its basic principle that is highly proposed in GATT and WTO.However, the kind of opening policies is only limited to industrial mining, serving and the relevant economic fields. Japan actually slows down and even counteracts its agricultural liberalization, which obviously disobeys its recommendations of the liberalization of trade. The Japanese government, by means of high import tariff, preferential duties, high subsidies and some relevant protective policies, tries every effort to protect its domestic agricultural market, especially the rice market, and makes it rid of fierce shock from the international market. It has been over 50 years during which period Japanese agriculture strikes itself under the extreme protection and it is very hard for imported farm produces to possess any market in Japan, since the Japanese market is always unreachable for farm produce exporters.Therefore, in the new round of WTO negotiation, Japanese agricultural protection has been focused as the main obstacle for the success of negotiation, which leads Japan to a very passive position. Meanwhile, confronted with the challenge that WTO multilateral negotiation is often frustrated and its procedure is very complicated and spans a very long time, mutual free trade has been the mainstream to fulfill the liberalization of trade for its convenience, agility and swift reactions. Japan should actively engage itself in mutual free trade negotiation to avoid being eliminated from market challenge. However, agricultural protection has been the obstacle for Japan to fulfill the liberalization of trade. Therefore, this chapter gives a very deep analysis on Japanese agricultural policies, digs out the relative reasons and illustrates their negative influences and developing trend.This chapter is composed of three parts. The first part vividly introduces the policies for Japanese agricultural protection. Firstly, the concept of policies for agricultural protection is defined for further analysis. Secondly, the detailed contents of the policies for Japanese agricultural protection is introduced, including high import tariff, preferential duties and high subsidies. Then, the reasons that Japan enforces agricultural protection in the factors of food security, economy and politics come out. Finally, the view is raised that the policies for Japanese agricultural protection must be constantly strengthened without any relax or impairment. The second part figures out the negative influences that the policies for Japanese agricultural protection impose on the liberalization of trade. The influences are manifested in two points. On one hand, the policies for Japanese agricultural protection make Japan a worse position in the global trade negotiation. Japan did not only pay much a lot in Uruguay Round, but undergone fierce opposition from other WTO members for its proposal of so called agricultural philosophy. On the other hand, agricultural protection seriously blocks the process of Japanese FTA. FTA between Japan and Singapore excluded agricultural agreement. Meanwhile, the FTA between Japan and Mexico has been postponed for many times and the building of free trade area between Japan and East Asia goes very sluggishly. The third part is the focus of this chapter, which analyzes in details the possibility of trade liberalization of Japanese farm produces. During the analysis, this chapter gives out a conclusion by means of expatiation on the status quo of the development of Japanese agriculture that in a short time Japan can not reach the liberalization of trade for farm produces. However, in a long term, there exists the possibility for Japan to fulfill free trade of farm produces, only if should Japan impair its protection on agriculture. Finally, on the basis of the analysis, there comes out of two countermeasures, one of which is to make Japan a better position in WTO and FTA/EPA negotiation and the other of which is to push up agricultural reformation and increase its international competitive power.