Peter Lewis: Asia business correspondent discusses who will be the next Japanese Prime Minister

Following the resignation of former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, candidates have begun stepping forward to take his place. 

In the running is Shinjirō Koizumi, son of a former Prime Minister and the current agricultural minister and Takaichi Senai, who aims to become Japan’s first female Prime Minister. 

Asia business correspondent Peter Lewis told Heather duPlessis-Allan that this election could ‘break the mould’ of exclusively elderly men running for the position of Prime Minister. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Peter Lewis Asia Business correspondenters with US. Hello Peter, Hello Heather, Right, Well,

(00:04):
who do you think is going to be Japan's nixt
prime minister.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Well, the chances are it's going to be a rather
elderly man who's been around in politics for probably too long,
because that's the way it normally works in Japan. They're
all sort of jockeying up for position they've got to get.
If you want to be the contender for this LDP election,
you've got to get twenty other lawmakers to support you,

(00:29):
and then you have to win first of all, that
leadership vote within the LDP itself. But even then it's
not enough. You've got to then go to Parliament and
be voted by a majority in Parliament in the upper
and lower houses. And this is where it could be
tricky because this isn't guaranteed either, because the problem is
the LDP has lost its majority in both the upper

(00:51):
House and the lower House, which is why we're having
this election in the first place. And then maybe having
been appointed prime minister, your chances of survival are not
because Japan has had eighteen prime ministers since nineteen ninety
and eleven of them have lasted only one year, so
the candidates the main two is first of all, Shinjiro Koizumi.

(01:14):
Now he's the son of a former prime minister, so
he has name recognition amongst the public within Japan. He's
also the agricultural minister, and he has got some credit
because he managed to drive down rice prices over the summer.
One of the things that was really led to the
LDP losing their majority was surging inflation, particularly rice, which

(01:38):
doubled in the space of just a few months, while
he managed to get to grips to that. So he's
certainly going to be within the race. The other candidates
who breaks the mold of elderly men running for the
to be prime minister is Takaichi Senai, who is a
proje prodge of the late Prime minister Shinzo are They

(01:58):
and she's a woman, so Japan could conceivably have its
first female prime minister. She's a conservative, so she would
attract obviously the sort of the middle ground, the right
wing base, many of whom have defected to some of
these protest parties. So she is definitely a name to
watch and she certainly has a chance.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Very interesting stuff. Now, why is Japan allowing Donald Trump
to decide where Japan invests its money.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
This is an extraordinarily one sided deal, to the point
at which you almost have to believe that maybe Donald
Trump is not a bad trade negotiet After all. What
they are doing is they've got this fight. As part
of the trade deal, which got tariffs reduced on the country,
particularly on auto ed exports, down to fifteen percent, Japan

(02:48):
agreed to invest five hundred and fifty billion dollars into
the US. Now it seems as details of that emerge
that really the US has total control over where japan
money is going to be invested. They're going to set
up an investment committee which will be run by US
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, and they will decide where that

(03:10):
money is going to go. And what's more, once the
original investment has been paid back, the US is going
to keep ninety percent of the profits. This is an
extraordinary deal to the point that you wonder what on
earth is Japan thinking in negotiating that, or former Prime
Minister Sheiba thinking. You can only imagine that maybe they

(03:31):
are just so desperate for this trade deal, particularly the
reduction in tariffs on the auto sector because that's the
main part of Japan's economy that they're taking. The view
that maybe five hundred and fifty billion dollars over three
years for Japan is not an awful lot of money,
and it will save them an awful lot of economic damage.

(03:53):
But nevertheless, this is a very very one sided deal.
The US has total discretion to decide if Japan is
keeping that deal as well, and if they don't get
the money or don't feel that it's the deal is
being upheld, they can go at their discretion reimpose all
these tariffs on Japan.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, Hi, thanks very much, Peter, I really appreciate it.
We'll talk to you next week again. That's Peter Lewis,
our Asia business correspondent coming up for what for more
from Hither Duplassy Alan Drive. Listen live to news talks.
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