Nakagawa, Junji --- "Japan’s FTA (EPA) and BIT Strategy in the Light of Competitive Dynamics" [2011] ELECD 466; in Buckley, P. Ross; Hu, Weixing Richard; Arner, W. Douglas (eds), "East Asian Economic Integration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: East Asian Economic Integration

Editor(s): Buckley, P. Ross; Hu, Weixing Richard; Arner, W. Douglas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849808682

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Japan’s FTA (EPA) and BIT Strategy in the Light of Competitive Dynamics

Author(s): Nakagawa, Junji

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

4. Japan's FTA (EPA) and BIT
strategy in the light of competitive
dynamics
Junji Nakagawa

JAPAN'S POLICY SHIFT TOWARD FTAS (EPAS) AND
BITS: WHY AND HOW?

In the early 2000s, Japan finally caught up with the global boom of free
trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs). The rest
of the world had begun to actively look at FTAs as a means of promoting
trade liberalization in the early 1990s, when multilateral trade negotiations
under the GATT were making little progress. Interest in FTAs increased
even after the establishment of the WTO in 1995, especially after the Doha
Development Agenda entered into deadlock. Indeed, the cumulative
number of FTAs notified to the GATT/WTO since 1949 increased from
86 in 1990 to 165 in 1995, to 251 in 2000, and further to 457 in October
2009.1 The number of BITs has also been increasing since the 1990s, and
rose to 2676 at the end of 2008.2
Japan had long preferred multilateral trade liberalization to preferential
trade arrangements. It criticized FTAs as discriminatory against non-
parties and detrimental to the GATT/WTO-based multilateral trading
system from which it had substantially benefited during its post-war
growth. However, it finally made a policy shift toward preferential
trade arrangements in the early 2000s. Japan signed its first Economic
Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Singapore in January 2002,3 and
it has since concluded EPAs with Mexico (2004), Malaysia (2005),


1 WTO, Regional Trade Agreements, Facts and Figures, accessed ...