Japan and TPP/TPP-11: opening black box of domestic political alignment for proactive economic diplomacy in face of ‘Trump Shock’

Abstract

Based on the neoclassical realism approach, this article aims to clarify factors conducive to Japan’s different roles in both participating in the trans-pacific partnership (TPP) and concluding the TPP-11 by focusing on how the US’s distinctive attitudes towards the TPP under the Obama and Trump administrations influenced Japan’s changing approaches. During the Obama administration, which needed Japan’s participation to expand the TPP in the face of China’s growing global and regional economic influence, Japan incorporated the TPP into its growth strategy and committed itself to sustaining US leadership during TPP negotiations by making necessary concessions on both the international and domestic fronts. By contrast, the Trump administration, with its strong propensity for bilateral deals to counter China’s bid for global economic hegemony with the TPP withdrawal urged Japan to change its reactive stance and take a proactive role in TPP-11 negotiations. This article opens a ‘black box’ of the political system under the second administration of Shinzo Abe, and demonstrates the strengthened function of the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Secretariat or Kantei within the centralised trade policy-making apparatus as key mechanisms contributing to a departure from the traditional features that occasionally hampered Japan’s foreign economic policy initiatives.

Keywords:

• TPP/TPP-11
• Trump
• Abe
• Kantei
• neoclassical realism
• RCEP

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgement

The author appreciates the research assistance of Yuma Osaki.

Notes

1 The LDP’s 2012 slogan was ‘No Lies. Strong opposition to the TPP. Steadfast. LDP (Uso tsukanai. TPP danko hantai. Burenai. Jiminto)’ and in the electoral manifesto, it would ‘oppose participating in the TPP negotiations as long as they were premised on tariff abolition without exceptions (emphasis by the author).’ As such, PM Abe could not join the TPP unconditionally.

2 Nikkei Business, April 25, 2017. Although a series of meetings were held in the same building, it was not the TPP ministerial meeting but a meeting on the potential expansion of the Pacific Alliance that Chinese delegates joined, according to a MOFA official who participated in the meeting in Chile (personal interview with a TPP negotiator, 24 May 2018, Tokyo). What is important here is the fact that Japan sensed China’s more serious engagement in this Latin American economic framework and associated it to the TPP.

3 The full text is accessible here: https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/tpp/naiyou/pdf/danang/171111_tpp_danang_statement_jp.pdf.

4 Information obtained from the Cabinet Secretariat webpage: http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/tpp/naiyou/pdf/hanoi/170521_tpp_hanoi_gaiyou.pdf.

5 Eventually, Canada’s demand for exceptional treatment of its own cultural products, as well as the Vietnamese one for the delayed introduction of rules for labour-dispute resolutions, an issue which Vietnam once accepted due to American demands, were solved, more simply, through the signing of bilateral side-letters among member states.

6 For instance, former USTR senior official Wendy Cutler comments: ‘Is Trump serious? What caused this shift? Might the U.S. actually return to this agreement? And if so, on what terms and timetable?’ (Nikkei Asian Review, January 30, 2018).

7 The Japanese text is accessible here: https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/97_abe/statement2/20170120siseihousin.html

8 The information is accessible here: https://www.thebalance.com/trade-deficit-by-county-3306264

9 The Japanese text is accessible here: https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/98_abe/statement2/20180122siseihousin.html.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Global Research Network program through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A2A2041060).