Japan's agricultural policy in international perspective

Agricultural protection in Japan began at the turn of the century, later than in Western Europe. But it has grown much more rapidly than in Western Europe and so Japan’s nominal protection rates are now more than twice as high as Europe’s As a consequence, the domestic welfare cost of Japan’s agricultural policy, as a percentage of GNP, is well above that for Europe. Moreover, even though the Japanese economy is much smaller than Western Europe’s, the cost of Japan’s protection to food-exporting countries is not a great deal less than that of the European Community’s policies, according to the results of a simulation model of world food markets