Overview:

The result of the general election in Japan in late October and the presidential election in the U.S. in early November could have profound implications on various aspects of the Japan-U.S. relationship. How will it impact Japan's economic security policies, such as the implementation of the Economic Security Promotion Act (ESPA), the economic security clearance law, and the Active Cyber Defense (ACS) legislation? To what extend will it change the economic security foreign policy, such as rules on subsidies, potential outbound investment regulations, and cooperation on critical and emerging technologies?

To delve into these questions, we have invited Akira Igata, the Director of the Economic Security Research Program at RCAST at the University of Tokyo, for a discussion about Japan's economic security immediately after the U.S. presidential election day.

Speaker:

Akira Igata is a Project Lecturer and the Director of the Economic Security Research Program (ESRP) at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), the University of Tokyo. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington DC, Pacific Forum (PF) in Honolulu, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra, and Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) in Prague. In addition, he is the Non-Executive Director at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).

Igata has been quoted widely in Japanese news outlets such as the NHK, Nikkei, Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, Sankei, Kyodo, and Yahoo! News. He also appears regularly on Japanese TVs, radios, and internet programs as an expert commentator on economic security issues. Internationally, he has been quoted in the media such as CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, Quartz, Nikkei Asia, Le Figaro, Handelsblatt, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Euractiv and Al Jazeera.

He advises the Japanese government, bureaucracy, and the private sector in various capacities.

Moderator:

Robert Dujarric is the co-director of ICAS. He’s a former Council on Foreign Relations (Hitachi) International Affairs Fellow. He also worked as a researcher in Washington DC and a junior investment banker in New York, Madrid, London, and Tokyo. He graduated from Harvard College and holds an MBA from Yale University.