Japanese and U.S. business leaders ended their two-day annual meeting Wednesday by adopting a statement asking the governments of their countries to promote investment to strengthen supply chains for important goods, including semiconductors, and technologies.
In the joint statement, adopted at the 60th Japan-U.S. Business Conference in Tokyo, the business leaders also urged the two governments to step up their cooperation with Southeast Asian nations to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
The leaders expressed their support for U.S. return to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement while sharing the view that it would be politically difficult to achieve this.
They asked the Japanese and U.S. governments to use the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, or IPEF, to promote the interests of both countries, which are among the 14 IPEF member states.
Japan-U.S. Business Council Chairman Jun Sawada, who co-chaired the conference, told reporters that the private version of the “Quad” grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States held discussions for the first time.
Sawada, also chairman of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, added that Japan and the United States should demonstrate leadership through public-private cooperation to their Quad and IPEF counterparts and the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to devise concrete measures to strengthen supply chains for semiconductors and rare earth elements.