TOKYO (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will touch down in Japan on Saturday with six of his ministers searching for closer financial ties, as he considers decreasing German dependence on Chinese raw supplies amid worldwide provide chain tensions.
Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are organizing a “government consultation” involving various cabinet members from each nations to talk about methods to safe financial safety.
“As democracies and as very industrialized, export-oriented economies, Japan and Germany face related challenges in shaping the digital and ecological transformation and strengthening the resilience of their economy in tricky geopolitical instances,” Franziska Brantner, state secretary in Germany’s economy ministry, told Reuters.
Offered Japan’s passing of a bill on financial safety, Berlin hopes to understand its raw material tactic and take Tokyo’s cue on how to reduce dependency on imports, a German government official mentioned of the stop by.
In a move mainly focused at China, Japan’s parliament passed an financial safety bill final year aimed at guarding technologies and reinforcing vital provide chains.
Trade amongst Germany and China rose to a record level final year, creating the Asian nation Germany’s most critical trading companion for the seventh year in a row regardless of political warnings in Berlin about excessive dependence.
Goods worth about 298 billion euros had been traded amongst the two nations in 2022, up about 21% from a year ahead of, according to information from the German statistics workplace.
Japan is Germany’s second biggest trading companion in Asia behind China, with volumes reaching about 46 billion euros in 2022.
Worried about Germany’s dependence, the centre-left government is now taking a tougher line towards Beijing than its centre-suitable predecessor and is exploring methods to wean itself off China’s economy.
(Reporting by Sakura Murakami in Tokyo and Riham Alkousaa in Berlin Editing by Alex Richardson)
