The price of imported meat, often used in the food service industry, is rising. U.S. beef has skyrocketed, and wholesale prices are about twice those of the summer of 2020. Prices of pork and chicken are also rising. Demand is increasing in China, where economic activity has rapidly resumed after the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the U.S., where the vaccination….Read more

Saturday’s Nikkei, Yomiuri, and Sankei gave prominent inside-page coverage to the official launch on Friday of an LDP panel on building strong supply chains in coordination with the U.S. and other partners with the goal of reducing reliance on semiconductor supplies from China and Taiwan. Tokyo and Washington are anxious to establish viable supply chains for the key strategic material….Read more

Tokyo, May 20 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s exports in April grew 38 pct from a year before to hit a record high of 7,181.1 billion yen, the Finance Ministry said in a preliminary report Thursday.   The record-breaking rise reflected growing exports to China, which was quick to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, and brisk shipments to the United States, where the….Read more

Tokyo, May 10 (Jiji Press)–Itochu Corp. <8001> reaped the largest group net profit among seven major Japanese traders for the first time in five years in fiscal 2020, which ended in March, according to their earnings reports for the year released by Monday.   Many of the companies suffered drops in their net profits or incurred a net loss due….Read more

By Shiraishi Takeshi   SILICON VALLEY – Chinese exports of electric vehicles (EVs) to Japan are rising sharply. During the period from January to March 2021, China exported 879 units to Japan, a nine-fold increase from the same period a year earlier. The majority of them are believed to be passenger cars manufactured by the U.S.’s Tesla. The increased export….Read more

NANA SHIBATA, Nikkei staff writer   TOKYO — The Japanese government and Japanese companies are battling copycats in China and South Korea, taking steps to protect the integrity of “made in Japan” products, from strawberries to whisky.   The government, led by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the son of a strawberry farmer from Akita Prefecture in northern Japan, has revised….Read more

Sunday’s Yomiuri and Saturday evening’s Nikkei wrote that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Saturday that Director General at the Prime Minister’s Office Tomochika Uyama, who previously served as deputy assistant minister at the Economic Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will assume the post of senior assistant to WTO Secretary-General Okonjo-Iweala. The papers wrote that Uyama….Read more

HIROYUKI NISHIMURA, Nikkei senior staff writer   TOKYO — The world’s largest trade pact that encompasses 30% of the global economy is set to come into force as early as this year.   The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, was ratified in Japan’s upper house of the Diet on Wednesday, bringing it one step closer to reality.   China has already assumed….Read more

Thursday’s Nikkei reported on the approval in the Diet on Wednesday of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) signed by 15 Asia-Pacific countries including China and the 10 ASEAN nations. The pact, which will be the world’s largest free trade deal, is expected to go into effect at the end of this year. The paper speculated that China has high….Read more

Tokyo, April 28 (Jiji Press)–The Diet, Japan’s parliament, on Wednesday approved the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free trade deal among 15 Asian and Oceanian countries.   The RCEP deal was approved at a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet. The House of Representatives, the lower chamber, gave its approval earlier this month.  ….Read more