Mr. Naoyuki Haraoka's blog

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The Coronavirus Reveals Inconvenient Truths

The spread of international supply chains has played a key role in advancing globalization as well as enabling greater production efficiencies at multinational corporations (MNCs) because it has facilitated the division of labor. This has especially been the case where manufacturing industries, an engine of the global economic growth, such as automobiles, are concerned.

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ASEAN is No “Plan B” for US-China Trade War Disruption of Japanese MNC GVCs

A quarter of Japanese manufacturing is done overseas with the subsidiaries of Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) venturing overseas to extend global value chains (GVCs) that begin in Japan. Under the resulting structure, the majority of Japanese manufacturing exports head towards overseas subsidiaries with capital ties to headquarters in Japan.

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Japanese Market Increasingly Attracts Asian Multinational Corporations

Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Japan has been increasing recently, contradicting the belief Japan is a closed market. Per the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), total FDI for 2016 increased more than USD $30 billion over the prior year and 2016 represented the third consecutive yearly increase. Increased FDI from Asian multinational corporations (MNCs) has been noteworthy, recording a 16.7 percent jump over 2015.

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Servicing Trade in Services through Proper Government Policies

With ongoing digital innovation (entailing evolving information and digital technology), trade in services is exploding globally. The Asia-Pacific Region (APR), in particular, is now exposed to a flood of digital technology and related services.

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The Implications of the China-US Trade War Given the Growing Importance of Japanese Subsidiaries to Japanese MNCs

The latest Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) Statistical Survey on Japanese overseas subsidiaries published on September 26 revealed their sales, facility and equipment investment, and employment all achieved significantly high growth.

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Pondering National Security Concerns as a Basis for Trade and Investment Barriers

In March, United States (US) President Donald Trump decided to raise tariffs on steel by 25 percent and on aluminum by 10 percent for national security reasons. This raised concerns about possible retaliation by US trading partners that might lead to a damaging cycle of trade actions that shrank world trade and spurred a global depression. US national security economic-related worries pertain not only to trade but also to foreign direct investment (FDI), especially high-tech FDI, because an increasing number of civilian technologies can be adapted for military use.

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SMEs Can Benefit from Globalization through Indirect Exports

Many anti-globalization activists doubt small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can profit from economic globalization given their competitive disadvantages versus multinational enterprises (MNEs). The good news for SMEs is that MNEs building global supply chains for products such as home electronics or electric appliances will need parts and components from SMEs to achieve competitiveness since many key components are made by SMEs.

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Infrastructure for Global Value Chains

The nature of the utilization of global value chains (GVCs) is a key element in determining the type of activity of multinational enterprises (MNEs). At the most primitive stage, trade in agricultural, mineral, or light-industrial products is dominant and relatively slow paced. Thus, there is little time sensitivity. At the second stage, business operations are more sophisticated and time sensitive.

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Liberal Investment Policy a Key Path to Realize the National Interest

Contemporary business firms face the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a large-scale ICT revolution. Innovations emerging during this transformative period have made it possible for manufacturing companies to divide the production process into many separate operations such as new product development, component production, assemble, sales, after-sales services, and so on. East Asia is no stranger to these dynamics. The horizontal division of labor in manufacturing has been common in this region since the 1980s.

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“America First” policy should be reinterpreted as “America’s MNEs First” Policy

United States (US) President Donald Trump aims to keep American companies inside the US to secure American employment. International trade analysis suggests, though, this is a wrongheaded policy. The present situation is one where Japan, Korea, and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) export intermediary goods to China, these countries’ subsidiaries or factories in China use a large proportion of these goods to assemble final goods for export to the US, European Union (EU), Japan, and elsewhere, and the US imports substantial amounts of assembled goods from China while exporting much less to China than those East Asian nations.

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