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Japan: Trade

Contents
 

Japan's agricultural imports (over $50 billion in 2008) make it the world's third-largest importer, after the United States and the European Union (EU). Based on total calories consumed, Japan imports about 60 percent of its food each year. Japan is the third-largest market for U.S. agriculture, accounting for about $13 billion in U.S. exports in 2008. The United States is the leading agricultural supplier to Japan. Imports from the United States (over $17 billion, including shipping costs) represent over one-fourth of Japan's total agricultural imports, a share that rose in 2007 and 2008 after declining since the mid-1990s. ASEAN, China and the EU-25 are the next-largest suppliers. Exports to Japan from these three regions gained market share in the 1990s. Together, they supplied 31 percent of imports in 1994 and 35 percent in 2008, after peaking at 41 percent in 2006. Japan's agricultural exports in recent years are over $2 billion per year, of which the United States accounts for over $400 million.

Meats are the largest component of Japan's agricultural imports—about 20 percent in recent years. Japan imports large quantities of pork, beef, and poultry meat. Based on the value of imports, Japan is the largest meat-importing country in the world. Because Japan allows frozen and chilled beef and pork to enter only from countries free of foot-and-mouth disease, the number of countries exporting such meat to Japan is small. In 2004 and 2005, Japan's ban on beef imports from the United States and Canada (because of fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) essentially restricted beef trade to Australia and New Zealand (see Beef Imports in the Issues and Analysis chapter).

Commodity composition of Japan's imports d
PNG | JPG

Trade barriers benefit Japanese farmers, especially those producing rice, milk for manufacturing, sugar beets and sugarcane, and wheat. Japan maintains tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) for some commodities, including:

  • Rice and rice flour,
  • Wheat and wheat flour, and
  • Butter and milk powder.

Imports outside the TRQs face high tariffs. Within some of the quotas, government-owned corporations have the sole right to import, and the imported commodities are resold into Japan's market with a high markup in price.

Japan's border policies also protect certain food processing industries. Strict government control over wheat, rice, dairy, and sugar products encourages processing of foods made from those commodities in Japan. Tariffs on vegetable oils make crushing margins high enough to sustain Japan's soybean and canola crushing industry. Despite the protection of flour milling, sugar refining, and butter and powder production, Japan's imports of processed foods and beverages have grown steadily.

For more information on trade topics, see the References section.

 

For more information, contact: John Dyck

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Updated date: July 15, 2009