The EU-Japan free trade agreement in evolving global trade politics
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The EU-Japan free trade agreement in evolving global trade politics Hidetaka Yoshimatsu 1 Received: 4 October 2018 / Revised: 4 February 2019 / Accepted: 21 April 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract The European Union (EU) and Japan began to search for the conclusion of a free trade agreement (FTA) around 2010, and formal negotiations on the EU-Japan FTA (EJFTA) began in April 2013. The negotiations took a longer time than expected, reaching a signature on the agreement in July 2018. This article, by taking into account the character of the EJFTA as a representative mega-FTA, examines how two variables—the influence of interconnected FTA structure and political leaders’ responses to anti-multilateralism—influenced the development process of the EJFTA. This article makes two main arguments. First, the presence and substance of other FTAs in which the EU and Japan had been involved brought about both positive and negative effects on the development of the EJFTA. Second, moves towards anti-multilateralism and market disintegration in 2016–17 urged Japanese and European leaders to pursue a swift conclusion of negotiations on the EJFTA.
Introduction The EU and Japan, as pivotal partners to the USA, have sustained the development of democracy and the market economy in the world. The two parties have made great contributions to the steady growth of major industrial sectors from manufacturing to services. They have propped up the liberal trade regime and multilateralism under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organisation (WTO) as the base of the growth of the world economy. Japan as an emerging economic power in Asia began inroads into the European market in the 1970s, and subsequently forged close trade and investment ties with major European nations. In order to strengthen and deepen the existing economic ties, Japan and the EU began to search for the conclusion of a free trade agreement (FTA) around 2010, and formal negotiations on the EU-Japan FTA (EJFTA) began in April 2013. The negotiations * Hidetaka Yoshimatsu [email protected]
1
Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, 1-1 Jumonjibaru, Beppu, Oita 874-8577, Japan
H. Yoshimatsu
took a longer time than expected, reaching a signature on the agreement in July 2018. The EJFTA, which creates a huge economic zone that accounts for 28% of the world GDP and 37% of the world trade, is expected to have significant positive impacts on the maintenance of the liberal trade regime and global economic governance. In general, research on trade politics pays attention to internal political interactions over distributional effects brought by a trade pact. This article, by taking into account the character of the EJFTA as a representative ‘mega-FTA’, examines how key variables that are relevant to the international level influenced the development process of this trade pact.1 This article makes two main arguments. First, the presence and substance of other FTAs in which the
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