Next January, Japan and Singapore will kick off a round of government-to-government negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement. The plans in the works reportedly call for signing the pact by the end of 2001 so that it will take effect in 2002.
There are already more than 120 regional FTAs worldwide; they include the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Japanese business community is also looking into FTAs with other countries, such as South Korea and Mexico. The question is whether Japanese farmers, who still fear free trade, will accept these new agreements.
In the past, the Japanese government criticized FTAs on the grounds that free trade should be promoted through multilateral liberalization talks, such as those of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization. They said that FTAs would divide the world into economic blocs. Tokyo opposed FTAs for another reason: Japan's farm products are not internationally competitive. Article 24 of the GATT says an FTA must effectively scrap tariffs and all other trade restrictions.