Keidanren Chief Sees U.S.-China Dispute Not Easy to Solve

November 20, 2018

Tokyo--Top Japanese business leader Hiroaki Nakanishi said Monday that resolving the ongoing trade row between the United States and China is "not easy."

The friction between the world's largest and second-largest economies is likely to have some impact on the Japanese economy, the chairman of the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren, also said in a speech at a Tokyo gathering hosted by the Research Institute of Japan, a Jiji Press affiliate.

Affected by the trade dispute, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum member economies gave up compiling a joint statement at their leaders' meeting in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, at the weekend, the first such development since the annual APEC summit started in 1993.

During the speech, however, Nakanishi pointed to the "multifaceted" nature of trade.

"We'll likely be able to manage negative impacts to a large extent in the next five years," he said, showing his expectations for efforts by Japanese companies.

Nakanishi also said that the "Society 5.0" initiative, proposed by the Keidanren chief himself, is a concept for moving toward a future society in which technologies such as artificial intelligence can resolve a variety of issues.

In order to achieve this, companies should not only sell high-quality goods but also provide added value that meets customer needs and helps to resolve social issues, Nakanishi stressed.

On "shunto" annual wage negotiations in Japan, Nakanishi said the longstanding format of the labor side making a unified demand and the management side offering a unified answer will no longer work. Jiji Press