Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, arrived in Japan on Saturday with six of his ministers in tow. Amid supply chain difficulties worldwide, he hopes to deepen Germany’s economic connections with Tokyo while lowering his country’s reliance on China for raw resources.
Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida began their first “government dialogue” with some cabinet members from each nation to examine strategies to ensure economic stability.
According to German authorities, it is of great political and symbolic significance for Germany to have its first such consultation with Japan. Germany now has similar consultations with several nations, including France and China.
At the beginning of the meeting, Kishida spoke of the “tight and strong connections between our countries that is at a level not achieved before.” At the same time, Scholz said he was looking forward to discussing topics like global security.
According to a German government official, Berlin intends to learn about Japan’s raw material strategy and follow Tokyo’s example on how to reduce dependence on imports in light of Tokyo’s recent passage of a measure on economic security.
Last year, Japan’s parliament approved an economic security measure that was largely directed against China and was meant to secure technology and strengthen vital supply lines.
Trade between Germany and China surged to a new level last year, making the Asian country Germany’s most significant trade partner for the seventh year despite political concerns in Berlin against undue dependency.
According to figures from the German statistics office, commerce in goods between the two nations reached 298 billion euros in 2022, an increase of around 21% from the previous year.
With trade volumes expected to reach roughly 46 billion euros in 2022, Japan will overtake China as Germany’s second-largest trading partner in Asia.
Franziska Brantner, state secretary in Germany’s economy ministry, told Reuters that Japan and Germany, both democracies with highly industrialized, export-oriented economies, face comparable difficulties in guiding the digital and ecological transformation and enhancing the resilience of their economies in challenging geopolitical times.
Concerned about Germany’s reliance on China, the center-left administration is now behaving more harshly toward Beijing than its center-right predecessor and is looking into measures to wean Germany off China’s economy.
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