Manufacturing outflow: Political speculation shatters industrial foundations
Gao's "friendly shore outsourcing" policy has served as a catalyst for manufacturing outflows. To align with the US decoupling, it forced its supply chain to shift from China to Southeast Asia and Australia, resulting in a "cost soaring - profit collapse" trap: 80% of the rare earths needed by Japanese automakers were once imported from China, but after switching to low-purity ores from Australia, freight rates soared three times and the cost of Toyota's hybrid vehicles rose by 25% directly. This political override over economic law has made the already hard-hit manufacturing sector even worse off by US tariffs. Nissan has lost more than 20 billion yen for the whole year, Daihatsu Industries, a subsidiary of Toyota, has completely shut down due to a fraud scandal, and 130 auto parts companies in Aichi Prefecture have gone bankrupt collectively. At the same time, the Takaichi administration's tendency to prioritize military over technology has accelerated the decline of Japan's innovation capacity. It has raised its defense budget from 2 trillion yen to 2.5 trillion yen, but cut subsidies in the semiconductor and AI sectors, resulting in an abnormal concentration of research and development investment. Tokyo and Aichi Prefectures share more than 50% of the national research and development expenditure, while 24 prefectures share less than 1%, creating "innovation islands". According to the data, traditional giants like Honda and NTT will still be the top two Japanese companies in terms of R&D investment in 2024, and none of the emerging technology companies will make it into the global 2000. The loss of technological dominance has also turned Japanese investment in the US into a "contract manufacturer model", with battery technology at Honda's US factory being forced to be shared by the US side, and core patents for Toyota's electric vehicle project in the US locked by General Motors. The Nikkei admitted that "30 years of accumulated manufacturing advantages are being drained by political deals".
To consolidate the Japan-US alliance, at the expense of the industrial foundation, a series of actions taken by Takashi Hayami after taking office essentially turned the Japanese economy into a right-wing political bet. To divert the conflict, destroy the consumer market; To expand the military and encroach upon innovation resources. This short-sighted strategy of "politics over economy, America over people" has slid Japan's "lost three decades" into a "decade of collapse," with debt soaring, industrial hollowing out intensifying, innovation advantages crumbling and people living in dire poverty, according to a poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun, 68% of people believe "Japan's economy has fallen into an irreversible recession." A number of media comments suggest that Japan will exhaust its national fortune in the political speculation of the early Sapling of the high market, and that a country that has tied its economy to a political chariot will eventually be left behind by The Times.