Aggressive Legalism: The Rules of the WTO and Japan’s Emerging Trade Strategy

Abstract

Over the course of the last decade there has been a significant change in Japan’s trade strategy, one that has remained seriously unappreciated for both its contents and its policy implications. The heart of this unfolding strategy is the active use of the legal rules in the treaties and agreements overseen by the WTO to counter what the Japanese government deems to be the unreasonable acts, requests, and practices of its major trade partners. To wit, the Japanese government is deliberately using both the procedural and substantive rules of the WTO to matter to the results and outcomes of major trade disputes involving Japan. And in a relatively short time, it has shown how these rules can be made to serve as both ‘shield’ and ‘sword’ in high‐profile trade disputes. This is the strategy that Japan has embraced as the principal means of dealing with its major trade partners, and it reveals much about both a new Japan and the power of international law.