The New Landscape of Economic Security and the U.S.-Japan Alliance

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May 9, 5:00 p.m - 6:30 p.m. PT / May 10, 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. JT

Economic security has emerged as a key foreign policy issue in Japan in recent years. Arguably one of the most active players in this field, the Japanese government has developed a comprehensive policy on economic security that seeks to protect its economy from the vagaries of geopolitical disruptions. Recent legislative efforts have centered around supply chain risks, critical infrastructure, and sensitive technologies and patents. Prompted by risks associated with business with China and intensified further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, concerns about economic security require governments and businesses to adjust their reliance on market mechanisms in international trade and compel them to formulate new policies and frameworks that would address these concerns. Featuring two leading experts on economic security and trade in Japan and the United States, this panel will discuss what those new policies might look like and what roles the US-Japan alliance should play in building resilient economic frameworks that would mitigate the economic damages of geopolitical disruptions.

Panelists
 

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Kazuto Suzuki is a Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and senior fellow of Asia Pacific Initiative (API), an independent policy think tank. He graduated from the Department of International Relations at Ritsumeikan University and received a Ph.D. from Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, England. He has worked in the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique in Paris, France, as an assistant researcher, Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba from 2000 to 2008, and served as a Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020. He served as an expert in the Panel of Experts for the Iranian Sanction Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015. 

Suzuki currently serves as the President of the Japan Association of International Security and Trade. His research focuses on the conjunction of science & technology and international relations; subjects including space policy, non-proliferation, export control, and sanctions.  His recent work includes Space and International Politics (2011, in Japanese, awarded Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), Policy Logics and Institutions of European Space Collaboration (2003), and many others.

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Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Prior to her arrival at Brookings, Solís was a tenured associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.

Solís is an expert on Japanese foreign economic policy, U.S.-Japan relations, international trade policy, and Asia-Pacific economic integration. She is the author of "Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries" (Stanford University Press, 2004) and co-editor of "Cross-Regional Trade Agreements: Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia" (Springer, 2008) and "Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her most recent book, “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation: Japan and the United States in the Evolving Asia-Pacific Order” (Brookings Press, 2017), offers a novel analysis of the complex tradeoffs Japan and the United States face in drafting trade policy that reconciles the goals of economic competitiveness, social legitimacy, and political viability. “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation” received the 2018 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Award.

Moderator
 

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Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021).