The Making of Asia’s First Bilateral FTA : Origins and Regional Implications of the Japan–Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ushered in a new era in Japans international trade policy in January 2002 when he and his Singaporean counterpart, Goh Chok Tong, signed the Japan-Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement (JSEPA), the first bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed between Asian countries. This trade strategy also reflected Japans interest in launching its so-called multi-layered trade policy which meant the pursuit of bilateral and regional trading arrangements, including FTAs, in an attempt to complement multilateralism based on the GATT/WTO to reinvigorate efforts to achieve global trade liberalisation. This paper aims to examine how and why Japan and Singapore decided to pursue FTAs, what interests both perceived in their pursuit of FTAs, what elements contributed to both countries being linked in this trade policy arrangement, and what implications the JSEPA has had for the FTA movement in East Asia. It argues that the JSEPA was made possible mainly through Singapores initial offer to exclude agricultural products from tariff elimination. But Japan faced problems in seeking FTAs with other ASEAN countries which were less developed than Singapore and had a higher proportion of agricultural exports, as the exclusion of specific agricultural products, such as rice and sugar, would contradict Japans claim that its FTAs would bolster the WTO-based multilateral system. The proliferation of FTAs in East Asia may generate a spaghetti-bowl effect with varying rules of origin that may divert and distort trade, but the new age aspects of the Japan-Singapore agreement will also have some positive economic effects. Although the preferential trade elements of the agreement are detrimental, the smaller portion of tariff elimination results in a smaller trade diversion effect on trading partners. Therefore, the Japan-Singapore agreement carries symbolic meaning in terms of trade policy debates as well as signifying a paradigm shift in Japans international trade policy.FTA, Japan, Singapore

The Japan - Australia Partnership in the Era of the East Asian Community - Can they Advance Together?

This paper aims to examine the implications of the rise of East Asian regionalism for the Australia-Japan partnership. In particular, it investigates whether both nations can sustain their partnership, which evolved around Asia Pacific regionalism over the last few decades, by exploring the upsurge of Japans interest in East Asian regionalism and examining characteristics of Australias foreign policy under the Howard government, which lacked a regionalist approach in its first three terms but has shown a keener interest in furthering relations with East Asian countries and promoting East Asian regionalism since late 2004.East Asia, Japan, Australia, foreign policy, Howard government, Regionalism

The making of Asia's first bilateral FTA: origins and regional implications of the Japan-Singapore economic partnership agreement

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ushered in a new era in Japan’s international trade policy in January 2002 when he and his Singaporean counterpart, Goh Chok Tong, signed the Japan-Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement (JSEPA), the first bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed between Asian countries. This trade strategy also reflected Japan’s interest in launching its so-called ‘multi-layered trade policy’ which meant the pursuit of bilateral and regional trading arrangements, including FTAs, in an attempt to complement multilateralism based on the GATT/WTO to reinvigorate efforts to achieve global trade liberalisation. ¶ This paper aims to examine how and why Japan and Singapore decided to pursue FTAs, what interests both perceived in their pursuit of FTAs, what elements contributed to both countries being linked in this trade policy arrangement, and what implications the JSEPA has had for the FTA movement in East Asia. It argues that the JSEPA was made possible mainly through Singapore’s initial offer to exclude agricultural products from tariff elimination. But Japan faced problems in seeking FTAs with other ASEAN countries which were less developed than Singapore and had a higher proportion of agricultural exports, as the exclusion of specific agricultural products, such as rice and sugar, would contradict Japan’s claim that its FTAs would bolster the WTO-based multilateral system. The proliferation of FTAs in East Asia may generate a ‘spaghetti-bowl’ effect with varying rules of origin that may divert and distort trade, but the ‘new age’ aspects of the Japan-Singapore agreement will also have some positive economic effects. Although the preferential trade elements of the agreement are detrimental, the smaller portion of tariff elimination results in a smaller trade diversion effect on trading partners. Therefore, the Japan-Singapore agreement carries symbolic meaning in terms of trade policy debates as well as signifying a paradigm shift in Japan’s international trade policy

The Japan–Australia partnership in the era of the East Asian community: can they advance together?

This paper aims to examine the implications of the rise of East Asian regionalism for the Australia– Japan partnership. In particular, it investigates whether both nations can sustain their partnership, which evolved around Asia Pacific regionalism over the last few decades, by exploring the upsurge of Japan’s interest in East Asian regionalism and examining characteristics of Australia’s foreign policy under the Howard government, which lacked a regionalist approach in its first three terms but has shown a keener interest in furthering relations with East Asian countries and promoting East Asian regionalism since late 2004

The genesis of APEC: Australian-Japan political initiatives

An intergovernmental regional economic institution was a common goal of Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, his Office, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade Industry (MITI) in the late 1980s. Bob Hawke publicly announced the idea in Seoul in January 1989, but his initiative was backed by a solid foundation of cooperation with Japan. In mid-1988 MITI had floated a proposal for regional meetings of economic ministers and DFAT’s strong interest in the idea urged coordination between the two countries. In March 1989 a MITI delegation visited the region to sound out reactions to its proposal and the Hawke initiative, and this laid the groundwork for the Hawke proposal’s relatively easy acceptance on the Australian delegation’s later visit in April and May. Both countries continued to coordinate their approaches toward the organisation of the first Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Canberra in November 1989. MITI’s proposal was eventually subsumed into the Hawke initiative, but MITI believed the successful establishment of APEC amounted to the success of its own proposal. This paper concludes that APEC was a joint enterprise between Japanese and Australian leaders, as had been the case in the establishment of the previous three regional institutions: the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC), the Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) forum and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC)

The Japanese origins of PAFTAD: the beginning of an Asian Pacific economic community

The Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) forum owes much of its existence to the enthusiasm and vision of three Japanese – Kiyoshi Kojima, Saburo Okita and Takeo Miki – an academic, a bureaucrat and a politician. This paper outlines the evolution of PAFTAD and shows how Japan’s thinking on regional cooperation was driven by two main forces – the formation of the EEC, which was seen as excluding trade from the region, and a desire to boost growth in developing Asian countries. There had been very little regional collaboration on Pacific economic policy before PAFTAD was established in 1968 and academics tended to know more about Europe or the Atlantic than each other’s countries. The forum proved to be an important and durable means of exchanging ideas and helped lay the foundations for the establishment of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum

A Consideration on Convergence Condition of Explicit Finite Element Analysis for Heat Transfer Equation

This paper treats the convergence condition of the explicit finite element method (i.e. the time and spatial axes are discretized by using the explicit finite difference method and the weighted residual method, respectively) which is applied for analyzing the heat problem in region with complex boundary configuration and also with several material properties. The main role of this study is the application of the Brauer's theorem. As the results we obtain that the usage of the Brauer's theorem is valid and that the application method of the theorem is presented in this paper