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This paper contrasts agricultural protection of Japan and Korea with the West and identifies major differences between them. It characterizes agricultural protection of Japan and Korea (net heavy food importers) as "tariff-based and scarcity-sensitive" aimed at promoting survival and the West (net food exporters) as "subsidy-based and surplus-inducing" aimed at enhancing farm income. We then identify factors underlying the coevolution and divergence in the extent of agricultural trade liberalization between Japan and Korea since the launch of the Uruguay Round in 1986. Korea accepted deep cuts in agricultural tariffs in bilateral FTAs with the US and EU during the 2000s while Japan continued to protect farm interests by concluding low levels of FTAs with politically sensitive products excluded from tariff concessions. The two countries' stances reversed since 2013 with Japan becoming proactive in pursuing high levels of FTAs with major agricultural exporting countries and Korea decelerating its opening of agricultural markets. To explain such divergences, this paper develops a political economy framework in which the incumbent political leadership would consider both national interests and sectoral (farm as import competing industries and business/manufacturing as exporting industries) special interests. Our analysis shows that President Roh (2002–2007)'s embracing of neoliberal paradigm in formulating foreign trade policies that would promote national interests underlies the unprecedented level of agricultural trade liberalization in Korea during the 2000s, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's determination not to be outcompeted by the rising China and Korea's ambitious FTA strategies underlies Japan's proactive bilateral and mega-FTA drives since 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In trade negotiations, developed countries have been frontrunners in advocating environmental protection whereas developing countries were reluctant to link environmental protection to their trade agreements. However, the recent trend of including environmental provisions (EPs) in free trade agreements (FTAs) shows a policy change in some of the emerging economies. Not only did they adopt EPs but they also actively introduced a comprehensive set of EPs – environmental chapters. Using the Republic of Korea (Korea)'s FTAs, this study explores why emerging economies come to include environmental chapters in their FTAs. Existing studies have offered explanations focusing on domestic politics. Yet, they do not specify the impact of the interaction between domestic and international politics. Through the lens of the two-level games, this study finds that the combination of domestic and international pressures plays an important role in making green FTAs. First, Korea has been pursuing environmental leadership at the world stage during the Korea-US FTA (KORUS) negotiation. Against this background, the US' proposal to include an environmental chapter has reverberated within domestic politics. Second, the costs of implementing this environmental chapter were low. After the KORUS, Korea has been including similar environmental chapters because these chapters were cost-effective ways to promote its enduring environmental leadership. This finding has far-reaching implications for facilitating emerging economies' green FTAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have flourished in East Asia since the late 1990s. Japan and Korea were at the forefront of this trend. Nevertheless, most policymakers' preferences orbited around region-oriented FTAs out of reluctance to make a sudden policy shift away from their conventional emphasis on World Trade Organization-based multilateral negotiations. The trend continued in Japan throughout the 2000s. In contrast, Korea took a sharp turn toward a cross-regional strategy in 2003. By the mid-2010s, this had created a significant gap in the two countries' overall FTA partner choices. What caused policymakers' ideas in the two countries to diverge from their initial focus on region-oriented FTAs? This paper focuses on the conditions that enabled policymakers' ideas to explain the divergence by developing the contextual‒dynamic framework of FTA policies. At the dynamic level, individuals are more likely to emerge with new ideas when their expertise comes from outside the decision-making body, accompanied by their social qualities and power. Contextual conditions should also be met: the trade policy environment should reciprocate agent-level qualities to create a supportive atmosphere for policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, with the world in search for new economic engines, China and Japan have explicitly given their answer through their expansion of overseas infrastructure investments. This study focuses on the flagship sector of high-speed railways (HSR) and examines what kinds of development financing China and Japan have adopted in making these investments. It asks the following questions: What similarities are there in the Chinese and Japanese approaches to investments in overseas infrastructure, and how do they differ from traditional Western development financing? Also, in what ways have China and Japan changed their approaches to overseas infrastructure projects during this process? It argues that in the process of expanding overseas infrastructure investments and competing for infrastructure projects, China and Japan have become 'competitive partners' in challenging the traditional norms of development financing represented by the Washington Consensus and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). To be more specific, China and Japan have adopted each other's practices of tied commercial financing, heavy government involvement, focusing on physical infrastructure and industrialization, and showing respect for host-country forms of governance. In particular, by joining China in the new game of exporting infrastructure and through its own 'quality infrastructure investment' initiative, Japan has broken out of the constraints of DAC norms as an aid donor and endorsed some fundamental Chinese approaches to development and development cooperation, which in their turn were inspired by earlier Japanese practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s states have sought to harmonise economic standards to aid the flow of goods, services and finance across borders. The founding agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), for example, harmonised standards on services, intellectual property and investment. However, mutlilateral trade negotiations in the WTO have since stalled. In response, the United States (US) has engaged in forum shopping, using preferential trade agreements at the bilateral, regional and multinational level to harmonise international standards. This article argues that through forum shopping the US has been able to export standards that support the commercial interests of US-based industries more than they encourage economic exchange across borders. Furthermore, because power asymmetries are starker in preferential trade negotiations smaller and middle power states should not enter trade agreements, which include regulatory harmonisation. This is illustrated with the case of the US-Australia free trade agreement, looking specifically at a copyright standard known as technological protection measures (TPMs). It was clear before, during and after the agreement was signed that Australia's existing standard on TPMs was more popular than the US-style standard. Nevertheless, a US-style standard is in effect domestically because of the trade agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to an understanding about the major changes in China–ASEAN economic relations after establishment of the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) in 2010. First, China's merchandize trade balance with ASEAN has shifted from deficit to surplus since 2012. This reflects China's improving comparative advantage in manufacturing production vis-à-vis ASEAN as a whole. Second, with China's wage hike, ASEAN investors can no longer take advantage of China's cheap labor force. Concurrently, China's investment in ASEAN has been increasing and become more diversified, ranging from energy to manufacturing and services. Singapore has remained the most important investment destination for Chinese investors and the largest foreign investor in China among ASEAN countries. Third, China has comparative advantages in providing construction, telecommunications, computer and information services and other business services to ASEAN. On the other hand, ASEAN, led by Singapore, has opportunities in the financial services and tourism markets in China. Finally, the development of economic regionalism, notably the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and Trans-Pacific Partnership, will remain critical for the CAFTA's relevance in regional economic integration, as well as China–ASEAN relations in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Korea–United States (KORUS) free-trade agreement negotiations were concluded in 2007, and ratified in 2011, the agreement has remained deeply controversial. Labor unions, civil society groups, and opposition politicians in South Korea have criticized the agreement as being unfair, and also in the United States have voices spoken out against the agreement. The process of negotiation by South Korea was deeply flawed, and the conclusion of the agreement, that included a unilateral ratification by the ruling party in National Assembly, was forcefully opposed by many groups in South Korean society with violent demonstrations leading almost to the collapse of the Lee Myung-bak government. This article argues that it was not only the perception of potential economic damage to, in particular agricultural, domestic interest that was the main cause of the public resistance to the agreement, but that the unique nature of the relationship with the United States, and how this influenced the progress of negotiating and ratifying the agreement in South Korea, was a leading course of the divisiveness of the agreement and the massive resistance it faced. This is also why while the conservative Park Geun-hye government has expressed its willingness to re-negotiate other free-trade agreements, it has remained adamant in its refusal to even consider reopening the KORUS agreement. It is not only the apparent trade benefits that accrued to South Korea that is behind this refusal. With the ruling party having lost the April 2016 National Assembly elections and presidential elections scheduled for December 2017, the conservative elite, concerned about its electoral fate, has no interest in re-opening such a divisive issue as the KORUS free-trade agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines conditions under which states in East Asia engage in the development of regional institutions. It assumes that crucial external events and shocks, which produce specific historical breakpoints – critical junctures – constitute a significant breakpoint at which the regional states willingly elevated a path to develop regional institutions to a new level. The analysis of the development of regional institutions for a free trade area and food stock for emergency revealed that regional states in East Asia changed their views on the evolving reality created by external shocks and such changes led to the creation of new regional institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]