Posted on 11/11/2010 11:12:44 PM PST by Palter
Atsushi Kono considers it the gravest threat to his family’s farm in a century of rice-growing: a free-trade initiative that could dismantle Japan’s sky-high protective farming tariffs, finally opening up the country to cheap, foreign produce.
In a move pitting Japanese farmers against the nation’s export industries, Prime Minister Naoto Kan is pushing to join negotiations for an American-backed free-trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would span the Pacific Rim. The new zone would give Japanese exporters of cars, televisions and other manufactured goods greater access to the United States and other markets.
Free trade is high on the agenda of the back-to-back summit meetings of the Group of 20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum this week in South Korea and Japan, attended by leaders including President Obama and Mr. Kan.
“Japan is determined to more actively open up to the world,” Mr. Kan told world leaders gathered at the G-20 meeting in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday. Meanwhile, Pacific Rim trade ministers gathering in Yokohama, Japan, vowed to take concrete steps to create a vast free-trade area that would involve over half of the world’s economic output.
But Japan’s politically powerful agriculture industry is not cheering. A trade agreement could dismantle the generous protections that have sustained Japanese farms for years — most notably, Japan’s 777.7 percent tariff on imported rice.
The Agricultural Ministry warns that if Japan were to join the proposed trade zone, 90 percent of the nation’s rice cultivation would disappear, and wheat, sugar, dairy and beef output would also be adversely affected — costing the country about 4 trillion yen, or $49 billion, in lost production and 3.4 million lost jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They are the worst, even worse than ours.
Think of the Japanese countryside as one big Colonial Williamsburg human theme park writ large.
“Subsidized” is inadequate to describe the situation.
I’ve always felt we should adopt a “Write your own tariff!” policy. Whatever tariff you slap on our goods, well, that’s your tariff, too. I’d love to see this take place.
If I rememeber correctly it costs nearly 1500 yen per kilo.
Sounds fair to me!
And just why the #%!! is China getting a special low tariff rate?
I really don’t blame the Japs for subsidizing their agriculture the way they do. Japan is an Island nation and if something big happens tomorrow (NORKS CHICOMS)and they are cut off they need to feed themselves. It’s a matter of survival and something WE need to think about more in regard to our own Country.
“In a move pitting Japanese farmers against the nation’s export industries, Prime Minister Naoto Kan is pushing to join negotiations for an American-backed free-trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would span the Pacific Rim. The new zone would give Japanese exporters of cars, televisions and other manufactured goods greater access to the United States and other markets.”
This article reads like the Wall Street Journal circa 1986. I’m not sure why they’re still debating about giving Japanese goods greater access to the American market. It’s a little too late to save our consumer electronics industry. RCA, Zenith, and Sylvania are gone.
In fact, there isn’t much of a consumer electronics industry in Japan anymore, either. Yeah, the companies still exist (unlike ours), but they make a ton of stuff in China. As an example, I’m typing this on a Toshiba laptop. Where was it made? Not in Japan.
Now, about the Japanese farms. Protectionism is something that has to be used with care. You utilize tariffs as a temporary measure to save an industry hammered by unfair trade practices, but if you leave them in place permanently, you end up creating this ridiculous system we see in Japan that’s somewhere between monopoly capitalism and socialism. Since these farmers have no competition, they can charge well above market price for their crops.
Strategic resource, and a integreal part of culture. At what cost does the World accept Free Trade. So if the trade stops or is disrupped a nation straves, and before that it loses its peoples ties to the land.
“It’s a matter of survival and something WE need to think about more in regard to our own Country.”
As if we didn’t have enough agri-pork of our own. We have so much food that obesity is the biggest problem facing the poor, not hunger.
“As if we didn’t have enough agri-pork of our own. We have so much food that obesity is the biggest problem facing the poor, not hunger.”
We need to get rid of the damn farm subsidies. They’re a relic from the 1930s that should have been repealed a long time ago. They also make sugar and fat way too cheap, thus creating the obesity epidemic.
Believe me, repealing subsidies would do a lot more to curb child obesity than the First Lady (aka Mrs. Ice Cream Cone) and her staged vegetable garden ever could.
Well we do have the fattest “poor people” in the world. What I was alluding to was not so much agricultural subsidize in our county as saving our vital resources. Such as rare earth elements and other things vital to our survival in a sudden upheaval.
I would be very surprised if anything changes. Farmers in Japan are a political force to be reckoned with, and I strongly doubt that the current government will change anything.
Wow, that’s some serious description...
No, you mean 1500 yen per five kilo bag. I just picked up some yesterday.
Still, I am ambivalent about this. Japanese farmers produce excellent quality produce and rice. Japan already imports most of its wheat and even soybeans.
I realize some compromise is needed, but I don’t want Japan’s family farms to be swallowed and streamlined into corporate agribusiness.
Big bump to the top.
You mean the global market price...
And then what becomes of the Japanese rice producers and their employees??? What can they do to survive??? Collect taxpayer funded unemployment benefits for a couple of years where they learn to live on less???
Maybe so, but the Japanese people like it that way. That’s why there is very little support for moves like this, even from the people living in the cities that have to pay the high prices.
Years ago, when Japan struck a deal that required them to buy a huge amount of Thai rice, it sat on shelves for months because no one was interested in buying it even though it was much cheaper. Some stores came up with the idea of tying bag of Thai rice to a bag of Japanese rice and selling them as a set. The Japanese housewives just untied them and bought the Japanese rice.
IIRC, Japanese government ended up buying all the Thai rice, relabeling it, and sending it overseas as food aid, although some might be in strategic stockpiles in case of national emergency.
Japanese like their domestic food products and do not mind paying higher prices for them. I buy Nescafe instant coffee made in Mexico at 396 yen for 200 grams. The Japanese Maxim (on the same shelf) costs 200 yen more. But the Maxim sells much better.
The same goes for a lot of stuff. Imported products are much cheaper, but the Japanese consumer will buy Japanese products by preference regardless.
One other incident. Some years back, a Japanese meat packing house was caught labeling imported beef as domestic. Now me, I love Aussie beef and think it tastes much better, so I am always delighted to see it on the shelves — but the Japanese consumers were furious and the meat packer was fined severely. I think they may have even gone out of business.
$8.50/lb ?
Check my math...
Interesting story about the Thai rice.
Things certainly have changed since I was there.
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