Japan is temporarily raising tariffs on U.S. beef imports as volumes have exceeded levels agreed to between the two nations for the fiscal year ending on March 31, Japan’s agriculture ministry said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. From Thursday, the tariff will rise to 38.5% from 25.8% for 30 days through April 16, marking the first time the safeguard measure has been imposed on U.S. beef imports since August 2017. Japan imported a total of 242,229 tonnes of U.S. beef by early March, exceeding the maximum 242,000 tonnes set under the Japan-.U.S.
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Japan needs to double the nearly $700 billion it’s already budgeted in extra spending to ensure a recovery from the pandemic, says an influential ruling party lawmaker who helped shape the country’s economic strategy, Bloomberg News reported. Kozo Yamamoto, who played a key role in crafting the fiscal and monetary framework known as Abenomics and is readying new proposals for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, says Japan needs another big dose of fiscal medicine that’s as ambitious as the aid bill just passed in the U.S.
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Brexit drove a shift in Japanese firms out of the U.K. and toward continental Europe, a report shows, Politico reported. The number of Japanese firms based in the U.K. fell 12 percent between 2014 and 2019, from 1,084 to 951, with most of the drop occurring during the politically tumultuous period following the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
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Over more than a decade, the Japanese central bank, uniquely among its global peers, has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into local equities and now owns about 7% of all the shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s first section. With stock prices near a 30-year high in Japan, shares bought by the central bank years ago have surged in value, the Wall Street Journal reported. Instead of winning praise for its investing acumen, though, the Bank of Japan faces growing pressure to stop acting like the Tokyo whale and find ways to spread the wealth.
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A Japanese real estate developer that pulled off a $1.9 billion employee buyout with U.S. private equity firm Lone Star is under pressure from a leading creditor to consider filing for bankruptcy protection, the Financial Times reported. Unizo, which owned a portfolio including hotels and central Tokyo office space, was at the centre of a 2019 bidding war between SoftBank-backed Fortress and other potential buyers including Blackstone and local property companies, having attracted high-profile interest in a market where real estate assets are only occasionally sold as a bloc.
Japan’s banking regulator is surveying regional lenders on how local businesses are coping with new restrictions to contain COVID-19, as it seeks to forestall a spike in bankruptcies, Reuters reported. The survey by the Financial Services Agency (FSA) follows the government’s roll-out of state-of-emergency measures last month that could destabilise regional economies. While policymakers stress Japan’s banking system remains stable as a whole, the move underscores their concern over the prolonged and widening damage the coronavirus pandemic is inflicting on companies and banks.
Japan’s Topix stock benchmark climbed to a three-decade high on Monday, drawing even more attention to its future amid plans for a sweeping market reform, Bloomberg News reported. The Tokyo Stock Exchange is set to undergo a once-in-a-generation shakeup in little over a year. Japan Exchange Group Inc., which owns the bourse, plans to cut the number of market segments, apply new listing criteria and turn five confusing, overlapping divisions into three simpler sections: blue-chips, start-ups, and the rest.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga looks set to extend a state of emergency for major metropolitan areas that will inflict more pain on the economy, as he tries to stem the latest wave of Covid-19 cases and reverse a fall in public support, Bloomberg News reported. The emergency covering 11 areas including Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya has helped halt a rapid acceleration of virus cases threatening the developed world’s oldest population. While infection numbers have started to drop under the guidelines, Suga’s government has said the number of cases remains worryingly high.
Japan Airlines Co. expects a worse loss this fiscal year than previously forecast as the coronavirus wreaks havoc on international demand for travel, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s flag carrier is now forecasting a net loss of 300 billion yen ($2.9 billion) for the 12 months ending March 31 and sales of 460 billion yen, according to an exchange filing on Monday. For the third quarter, JAL reported a net loss of 51.5 billion yen, wider than the 36.9 billion yen estimated by analysts. Sales for the period were 161.8 billion yen versus the 170 billion yen forecast.
A tug of war has emerged in Japan between authorities calling on restaurants to close early to stem the spread of the coronavirus, and business owners who say such requests are pushing them past their limits, Bloomberg News reported. With Japan’s virus strategy dependent on voluntary cooperation, the struggle shows the limits of its social compliance model as the pandemic drags on into a second year.