708-Chaudhari Technical Institute, Gandhinagar - Gujarat ...

Import policy of Japan
Postwar era
Japan begins the postwar period with heavy import barrier. In effect all goods
were subject to government quotas, many face high tariffs, and MITI had
authority over the part of the foreign exchange that companies needed to pay
for any import. These policies were justified at the time by the weakened
position of Japanese industry and the country's unrelieved trade deficits.
The main force for change during has been international obligation that is,
reply to foreign, rather than domestic, and force. The result has been a
extensive, unwilling process of reducing barriers, which has irritated many of
Japan's trade partners.
Japan has been a participant in the major rounds of tariff cutting discussions
under the GATT structure — the Kennedy Round completed in 1967,
the Tokyo Round completed in 1979, and the Uruguay done in 1993. As a
outcome of these agreements, tariffs in Japan cut down to a low level. Upon
complete accomplishment of the Tokyo Round agreement, Japan had the
lowest regular tariff level amongst industrial countries—2.5 percent, compared
with 4.2 percent for the United States and 4.6 percent for the European
Union (known as the European Community before November 1993).
1980s
Japan's quotas also drop. From 490 items under quota in 1962, Japan had
only twenty-seven things under quota in the mid-1980s, and that number drop
again late in the decade to twenty-two with proceed agreements planned to
come into result in the early 1990s, which would reduce the number again.
But those products unmoving under quota prove to be highly visible and were
the object of complaint by exporting countries. The drop of controlled things in
the late 1980s resulted from Japan's loss of a GATT case brought by the
United States regarding import limitations on twelve agricultural products. In
adding, heavy weight from the United States led to an agreement that Japan
would end import quotas on beef and citrus fruit in 1991.
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