Published on July 15, 2019.
Through Hideo Tamura’s serialized column in the monthly magazine HANADA, this article criticizes the perversion of Japanese media coverage of the U.S.–China trade war. It questions the reporting stance of The Asahi Shimbun, Nikkei, NHK, and others, which label the Trump administration’s measures against China as protectionism while refusing to confront the reality that China’s intellectual-property violations and trade surplus with the United States finance its military expansion, Belt and Road strategy, South China Sea domination, and ambitions toward the Senkaku Islands.

July 15, 2019.
The total amount of China’s trade surplus with the United States over the ten years up to last year was 3.2 trillion dollars, equivalent to more than 90 percent of the increase in renminbi funds issued during that period.
The following is a chapter published on July 30, 2018.
Tamura Hideo is not a commentator who speaks about economics using knowledge merely borrowed from the Ministry of Finance.
Still less is he someone who simply repeats the editorials of The Asahi Shimbun or Nikkei; he is one of the few genuine experts on economics.
The following is from his column serialized at the beginning of this month’s issue of the monthly magazine HANADA, released on the 26th.
Emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
The perversion of Japanese media that denounce Trump.
On July 6, the United States and China each invoked sanctions and retaliatory tariffs on imports from the other country, entering a trade war.
What surprised me was that in Japan there are overwhelmingly many media outlets and intellectuals who side with China.
It is a perversion in which they regard U.S. President Trump as a “protectionist” and in effect elevate Chinese President Xi Jinping, who ignores free-trade rules.
First, let us look at the July 7 morning editorial of The Nikkei.
The headline was “The United States and China Should Withdraw Sanctions and Ease Friction Through Dialogue,” and although the content criticized China by saying such things as “China’s intellectual-property violations, by which it steals technology and information through various methods, are malicious,” the conclusion was, “Even so, rushing into sanctions and retaliation will only strangle both sides.”
It is almost as if it were saying both sides are equally at fault.
And it concludes, “The United States has invoked import restrictions on steel and aluminum against countries other than China as well. Japan and Europe must also cooperate and block protectionism.”
Its intention to give readers the impression that “the United States equals protectionism” is obvious.
The July 4 editorial of The Asahi Shimbun was titled “Stop the Chain of Retaliatory Tariffs and Protectionism.”
After placing the U.S. import restrictions on steel and aluminum and the “high tariffs on Chinese products” on the same level, it lectured the United States that it “should correct its protectionism.”
In NHK’s Sunday Debate on the 8th as well, many experts expressed concern about “protectionist America.”
Western mainstream media are generally critical of Trump’s policies, but they do not declare the Trump administration’s hard-line measures against China to be protectionism.
In Britain, the birthplace of the classical economics theory of “free trade,” Parliament, after many years of debate, elevated free trade as a political principle.
Even when import restrictions were adopted, the political and journalistic worlds did not regard them as “protectionism,” but called them “reciprocity” or “fair trade,” and positioned them strictly within the framework of free trade.
The U.S. Congress and successive presidents have followed this as well.
In the 1980s, President Reagan, a “free trader,” called the application of Section 301 of the Trade Act to Japan “fair trade.”
The Trump line is the China version of that.
By contrast, Japanese economists, as ever, treat textbook-style “free trade” as a golden rule, and half-informed media people, intellectuals, and politicians sing in chorus and turn to defending China.
The theory of free trade says that if tariffs and non-tariff barriers are eliminated, and each country specializes in industries where it has an advantage and divides labor with other countries, all will prosper, but if a country is told to abandon basic industries and high technology and rely on imports from other countries, and to entrust the production of staple foods such as rice to other countries, then national sovereignty is unnecessary.
Companies that sacrifice domestic employment and produce only in other countries betray their home country in the name of free trade.
The actual international free-trade system is competition among nations, and it produces winners and losers.
Its driving force is political dynamics among nations, not an empty economic prayer.
The free-trade rules of the World Trade Organization, or WTO, are the product of compromise among nations and cannot possibly be an ideal paradise of free trade.
For only Japanese media and intellectuals to bring up WTO rules endlessly like identical candy slices and criticize President Trump is to expose their ignorance of international politics.
It is China that has exploited the WTO system and done whatever it likes, and it is extremely malicious, as even the pro-China Nikkei editorial admits, yet the media do not demand punishment of China for violating WTO rules, and instead condemn U.S. retaliatory measures.
That is what is truly unfair.
What is most serious is the lack of recognition that China’s threat derives from its trade surplus with the United States.
The Chinese authorities absorb every incoming dollar, issue renminbi using foreign-exchange reserves as the source, expand finance quantitatively, and have achieved high growth.
The funds for buying high-tech U.S. companies and for the Chinese economic-zone concept known as the Belt and Road Initiative also rely on foreign reserves.
The total amount of China’s trade surplus with the United States over the ten years up to last year was 3.2 trillion dollars, equivalent to more than 90 percent of the increase in renminbi funds issued during that period.
Relying on abundant funds, China advances its military expansion, watches for an opportunity to seize the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, occupies reefs in the South China Sea, fills them in, and turns them into military bases.
It draws Japanese, American, and European companies into its expanding market and forces them to provide advanced technology.
It steals technology through cyberattacks and corporate acquisitions.
It launches export and investment offensives against weak neighboring countries, increases their debt burdens, and when they have difficulty repaying, seizes local infrastructure.
The Trump administration is prepared to increase the total amount of imports subject to sanctions against China by 200 billion dollars, and then by another 300 billion dollars, bringing the total to 550 billion dollars.
Since total U.S. imports from China amount to 520 billion dollars, the plan is to impose additional tariffs on all imports.
China’s balance of payments is 120 billion dollars, so if its trade surplus with the United States is blown away, China will fall into deficit, and finance will shrink.
Then its economic and military expansion will stop.
That will become security for Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and others.
The main motive of Trump’s policy is “America First,” but for Japan it is security.
Watching Japanese reporting that repeatedly chants “protectionist America,” Mr. Xi must surely be grinning inwardly.