The intensified geopolitical tension in Northeast Asia and the U.S.–China confrontation have shifted policy debates in Japan toward national security while the economic discussion has become thin. To regain more balanced policy talks, this paper tries to quantitatively comprehend the effect of the United States and its allies’ export controls on the East Asian machinery production networks and Japan's trade performance. Major findings include the following four points: First, most of the supply chain decoupling policies by the Japanese government have been the ones to prepare for sudden interruptions of the supply of important items while decoupling policies for strategic competition are limited only in the context of the cooperation with the United States. Second, international trade statistics at the industry level do not show clear evidence of supply chain decoupling in East Asia due to the U.S. export controls, at least up to 2022. Third, however, the negative trade effect becomes visible at the product or individual firms’ level, and the recent strengthening of the United States and its allies’ export controls may augment the negative effect on machinery production networks. Fourth, although the scope of trade controls would expand further, the supply chain decoupling is likely to end up with a partial one. The paper claims that middle powers such as Japan must establish a well-balanced trade policy.

This paper provides empirical evidence that supports the continuing importance of machinery international production networks (IPNs) in East Asia. We first confirm their robustness and resilience, even during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as the significance of East Asian countries as suppliers of machinery final products and parts and components for the world. Then, we demonstrate how deeply East Asian countries are committed to machinery IPNs by applying a gravity equation to pre-pandemic bilateral machinery trade and comparing actual values with fitted values of the estimated equation. The gravity estimation exercise indicates that machinery trade is basically regional—within Factory Asia, Factory North America, and Factory Europe—but Factory Asia also has strong inter-regional linkages. It also verifies that ASEAN has played an important role in Factory Asia, going far beyond the gravity prediction, for the development of machinery IPNs.

This paper investigates the impacts of COVID-19 on international production networks in machinery sectors by shedding light on negative supply shocks, negative demand shocks, and positive demand shocks. Specifically, we examined changes in trade in the trade-fall periods amid COVID-19 in 2020 using Japan's machinery trade at the most disaggregated level and decomposed them into two intensive margins (i.e., the quantity effect and the price effect) and two extensive margins (i.e., the entry effect and the exit effect). Our empirical results show that trade relationships for parts and components were robust even amid COVID-19 and that international production networks in machinery sectors were almost intact. They also demonstrate that COVID-19 brought positive demand shocks for specific products with special demand due to its nature in addition to negative supply shocks and negative demand shocks, which partially explains heterogeneous effects not only among sectors but also among products in the same sector. As of October 2020, Japan's machinery trade seems to have mostly recovered.

The current trade turmoil is not limited to negative economic effects stemming from the series of recent trade measures erected by the United States as part of the escalating U.S.–China trade war. The more serious issue that will unfold in the middle to long term is the potential collapse of the rule-based trading regime. The weakening of the multilateral trading system centered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) seems to continue. East Asia has been one of the largest beneficiaries of the rule-based trading regime in its course of extending and deepening international production networks and must now take proactive moves to defend and preserve this stable economic environment. Two crucial tasks in the preservation of the WTO are efforts to maintain the functionality of the dispute settlement mechanism and the revival of the WTO as a forum for future trade negotiations. At the same time, East Asia must develop a network of mega–free trade agreements (FTAs) to partially supplement a possible loss of the multilateral framework.

Many people have a vague notion that the room for expanding international production networks is almost exhausted and that therefore international trade has slowed down since the recovery from the great trade collapse. This paper presents evidence against such a belief in the East Asian context by classifying finely disaggregated trade data based on the stages of the production process. The trade slowdown was attributed mainly to sluggishness of trade in primary goods and processed raw materials. In contrast, East Asian trade in manufactured parts and components and the assembled end-products within production networks continued to expand steadily.

This paper assesses the recent widening and deepening of machinery production networks in ASEAN by using highly disaggregated international trade data over 2007–13. Based on both traditional trade value data analysis and a novel approach to the diversification of exported products and destinations, we confirm the steady development of back-and-forth trade links, notably with East Asian partners, centering on Singapore and Thailand. In addition to the five ASEAN forerunners, Vietnam is an increasingly active player in such networking. Although their degree of participation is still limited, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar also show signs of joining production networks.

Does outward foreign direct investment accelerate de-industrialization at home or generate domestic jobs and operations? This paper applies the job creation (JC)/destruction (JD) method to micro data of Japanese manufacturing firms and provides a bird's eye view of the dynamism of globalizing firms in terms of domestic employment, domestic establishments, domestic affiliates, exports, and imports. It examines gross and net changes in domestic operations by multinational enterprises (MNEs) that expand operations abroad (expanding MNEs), compared with non-expanding MNEs and local firms, for the periods of 1998–2002, 2002–06, 2006–08, and 2008–10. It also conducts the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to investigate whether the changes in domestic operations and trade by expanding MNEs are larger than those by other firm types. Major findings are the following: (1) gross changes in domestic employment and domestic operations are much larger than net changes, showing restructuring dynamism and firm heterogeneity; (2) de-industrialization or the shrinkage of the manufacturing sector is not relevant except for the period 1998–2002, though a slight declining trend in manufacturing activities is observed in recent years; (3) expanding multinational small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tends to enlarge domestic employment and domestic operations, compared with other types of SMEs; (4) expanding MNEs intensify headquarters activities; and (5) expanding multinational SMEs are likely to expand exports and imports more than other types of SMEs.

This paper investigates new developments in the pattern of machinery trade, with a focus on the extent and depth of production networks in North America. We pay particular attention to North America's trade links with East Asia, which have intensified in the last two decades. Investigation of changes in total trade value and the growth of trade on the extensive margin both demonstrates the expanding fragmentation of production in North America as well as the strengthening of connections with Mexico. Our quantitative analysis, which is based on gravity estimation of trade volume and extensive margin trade responses, also provides evidence that U.S. imports of machinery from East Asia are especially strong, and further, that Mexico's role has changed, as it now provides a bridge for trade between East Asia and the United States. These new developments in the pattern of machinery trade reflect reductions in services link costs, the further evolution of production sharing in the U.S.–Mexico nexus, and the strengthening competitiveness of production networks based in East Asia.