Can Japan Save the Liberal Economic Order in the Asia Pacific: Geoeconomic Strategy of a Mature Developmental State

Once attacked for having protectionist and mercantilist economy, Japan is now the champion of liberal economic order that led the successful conclusion of the TPP-11 after the US withdrawal from the agreement. How did Japan transform, and can Japan lead liberal economic order in the Asia Pacific?

Saori N. Katada is a Professor at School of International Relations and the Director of the Center for International Studies (CIS) at University of Southern California. She is a co-author of two books: The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan’s Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018). Her single-authored book Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001) received Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award. She has also published six edited and co-edited books and numerous articles on the subjects of trade, financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia as well as Japanese foreign aid. Her current project is on Japan’s foreign economic policy and East Asian regionalism. For her research on regionalism, she was recently awarded Asia Studies Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, Japan Foundation Research Grant and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She has her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science) in 1994, and B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo). Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.