One thing I would love to see is FDI in naval shipbuilding. It is clear America cannot build naval vessels in any meaningful way. We have an urgent need.
Excellent article - hopefully it will reach the right people in Japan. This type of analysis is your great strength. More of this economic analysis and less of domestic politics would be much appreciated.
Japan (and Taiwan too) have a cultural affinity to hardware, which one can see and touch (and the country has a history of being good at it). They can also get investment and funding. Whereas software is looked at with suspicion as not being “real”. (I have software entrepreneur friend founding companies there who complains such.
This a good set of policies that I hope she can get the government to do, but given the small number of seats and weak coalition (is it even) I don’t know how much of this can get done.
Many of the policies she ran on were on lowering costs to consumers by keeping consumption taxes low, removing the tax surcharge on gasoline and making food partially exempt from the tax. I don’t know how much of the consumption tax reduction is going to help with the defense buildup or the spending on American investments. And even though they are acting close, Trump can suddenly ruin things with temper tariffs if triggered by anything like he was by the Canadian Reagan ad.
One reason that Japan has fewer programmers is that most programming languages are simplified versions of English, and the Japanese language and English are structurally very different. This is one of the reasons there are so many Indian programmers, because facility with English is widespread in India.
These are all good suggestions and would seem to work, but I think Brad Glosserman had a good point when he opined that we have already seen Peak Japan. There seems to be some intangible factor, perhaps cultural, perhaps demographic, perhaps having lived with relative stagnation for so long, or a combination thereof, that seems to enervate a country during its period of relative decline. That seems to be happening to Japan. I have an intuitive sense that they won't be able to shake it off.
1. If large Japanese companies are sitting on piles of cash and newer companies need funding to grow, why aren’t acquisitions a good solution? That seems to work for pharma.
2. With mountainous terrain and extensive coastline, why isn’t wind a good potential source of electricity for Japan?
Who will want more imports? Seems America doesn't for sure. It would make sense to replace Chinese supply with Japanese, but it's not Japan making the decision.
Really interesting to see the application of economic solutions to a real world problem - as in how to move Japan forward. but here’s an interesting thing and maybe points to my ignorance- I thought Samsung was Japanese 🤦🏻♂️ . Please don’t tell me Honda isn’t 😬 . But what about immigration? Isn’t that an issue and did she not have some problems with that in her campaigning.
Many of the complaints about immigration are abuses of the lax visa regulations. For example, people on tourist visas were able to get drivers licenses because China and Vietnam don’t participate in the International Drivers Permit system but there was demand for them by tourists or short term visitors. They have recently added more rules to prevent tourists from getting licenses.
There was also a business visa program with low requirements (investing less than $100,000 or so in a local business) which would allow the visa holders, their families and their employees to get subsidized national health insurance, and then use it to all get quick treatments, especially when they weren’t available in their home countries.
The recent campaign also focused on the typical complaints about crowded tourist cities, rude tourist behavior (like talking on your phone on the train) and foreigners (Chinese) buying condos as nest eggs and leaving them vacant.
Takaichi’s policies are against these abuses, but has Trump like views on illegal immigrants, strict enforcement deportations, against refugees and protective of domestic jobs, and also against foreign land purchases. She does state that immigration is required to fill jobs but wants more regulation to boost local employees first. It’s obvious that Japan needs immigrants to fill all kinds of jobs. Lots of low skilled jobs are now filled by immigration (and is visible in convenience stores and tourist industry jobs). I was recently in a small rural town that had a large Daihatsu auto factory and at the town center there was a new 外国人相談センター or foreign consultation center to help immigrants (presumably legally working at the factory ) deal with rent, government or other daily living activities. This center was advertised at the small train station, in the midst of quite tasteful Halloween decorations, none of these things had I seen before in rural Japan.
Takaichi also made “problematic” comments in her campaign like saying that tourists were kicking the sacred deer in Nara, but none were anywhere near as hyperbolic or crazy as what Trump says all the time.
Vietnam participates in the International Driver's Permit system, not sure what you're referring to. They signed the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic on 20 August 2014.
Japan are the ones who haven't signed the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. It is Japan's problem, not Vietnam's.
The Japan government needs to rethink its costly investments in the "Hydrogen Economy", which is likely to be a long term strategic mistake.
Japan has an impressive space industry that is in the early stage. It wouldn’t surprise me if, in the long run, it outperformed the EU space industry.
One thing I would love to see is FDI in naval shipbuilding. It is clear America cannot build naval vessels in any meaningful way. We have an urgent need.
Excellent article - hopefully it will reach the right people in Japan. This type of analysis is your great strength. More of this economic analysis and less of domestic politics would be much appreciated.
Japan (and Taiwan too) have a cultural affinity to hardware, which one can see and touch (and the country has a history of being good at it). They can also get investment and funding. Whereas software is looked at with suspicion as not being “real”. (I have software entrepreneur friend founding companies there who complains such.
This a good set of policies that I hope she can get the government to do, but given the small number of seats and weak coalition (is it even) I don’t know how much of this can get done.
Many of the policies she ran on were on lowering costs to consumers by keeping consumption taxes low, removing the tax surcharge on gasoline and making food partially exempt from the tax. I don’t know how much of the consumption tax reduction is going to help with the defense buildup or the spending on American investments. And even though they are acting close, Trump can suddenly ruin things with temper tariffs if triggered by anything like he was by the Canadian Reagan ad.
I will be impressed if she kills fax machines.
They died long ago
One reason that Japan has fewer programmers is that most programming languages are simplified versions of English, and the Japanese language and English are structurally very different. This is one of the reasons there are so many Indian programmers, because facility with English is widespread in India.
These are all good suggestions and would seem to work, but I think Brad Glosserman had a good point when he opined that we have already seen Peak Japan. There seems to be some intangible factor, perhaps cultural, perhaps demographic, perhaps having lived with relative stagnation for so long, or a combination thereof, that seems to enervate a country during its period of relative decline. That seems to be happening to Japan. I have an intuitive sense that they won't be able to shake it off.
https://press.georgetown.edu/Book/Peak-Japan
What countries and industries are likely to be the source of the Greenfield FDI? Don’t you think tariffs and nationalism would make any FDI slow down?
Two questions:
1. If large Japanese companies are sitting on piles of cash and newer companies need funding to grow, why aren’t acquisitions a good solution? That seems to work for pharma.
2. With mountainous terrain and extensive coastline, why isn’t wind a good potential source of electricity for Japan?
Aha!
1. They're doing tons of acquisitions actually
2. Offshore wind is really expensive. Land-based wind is fine, but the acreage required is vast.
Who will want more imports? Seems America doesn't for sure. It would make sense to replace Chinese supply with Japanese, but it's not Japan making the decision.
Really interesting to see the application of economic solutions to a real world problem - as in how to move Japan forward. but here’s an interesting thing and maybe points to my ignorance- I thought Samsung was Japanese 🤦🏻♂️ . Please don’t tell me Honda isn’t 😬 . But what about immigration? Isn’t that an issue and did she not have some problems with that in her campaigning.
Honda is Japanese
Phew 😮💨
Many of the complaints about immigration are abuses of the lax visa regulations. For example, people on tourist visas were able to get drivers licenses because China and Vietnam don’t participate in the International Drivers Permit system but there was demand for them by tourists or short term visitors. They have recently added more rules to prevent tourists from getting licenses.
There was also a business visa program with low requirements (investing less than $100,000 or so in a local business) which would allow the visa holders, their families and their employees to get subsidized national health insurance, and then use it to all get quick treatments, especially when they weren’t available in their home countries.
The recent campaign also focused on the typical complaints about crowded tourist cities, rude tourist behavior (like talking on your phone on the train) and foreigners (Chinese) buying condos as nest eggs and leaving them vacant.
Takaichi’s policies are against these abuses, but has Trump like views on illegal immigrants, strict enforcement deportations, against refugees and protective of domestic jobs, and also against foreign land purchases. She does state that immigration is required to fill jobs but wants more regulation to boost local employees first. It’s obvious that Japan needs immigrants to fill all kinds of jobs. Lots of low skilled jobs are now filled by immigration (and is visible in convenience stores and tourist industry jobs). I was recently in a small rural town that had a large Daihatsu auto factory and at the town center there was a new 外国人相談センター or foreign consultation center to help immigrants (presumably legally working at the factory ) deal with rent, government or other daily living activities. This center was advertised at the small train station, in the midst of quite tasteful Halloween decorations, none of these things had I seen before in rural Japan.
Takaichi also made “problematic” comments in her campaign like saying that tourists were kicking the sacred deer in Nara, but none were anywhere near as hyperbolic or crazy as what Trump says all the time.
Vietnam participates in the International Driver's Permit system, not sure what you're referring to. They signed the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic on 20 August 2014.
Japan are the ones who haven't signed the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. It is Japan's problem, not Vietnam's.