"A free and open economy is the
foundation of global peace and prosperity."
– Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, G20 summit, June 2019.
On July 1, 2019, only few days after Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe opened the G20 summit with a speech endorsing an open
global economy, the Japanese government announced that it will
impose tighter controls on technology-related exports from Japan to
South Korea for reasons of national security. The controls may have
a devastating effect on trade between the two countries and will
create further drag on the world economy.
The Movement of Technology: A Changing Landscape
Regular readers of globaltradelawblog will not be surprised to
hear of new export controls designed to prevent the spread of
knowledge. The new Japanese export control measures are part of a
larger trend: countries are building walls around foreign access to
their technology. Export control regulations are nothing new (the
U.S. Government passed the Trading with the