Takaichi Urges Strategic Industrial Policies for Japan's Economy

Takaichi discusses Japan's economic stagnation and calls for strategic industrial policies.

[Press Conference by Prime Minister TAKAICHI Sanae] [Opening Statement by Prime Minister Takaichi] Good evening, everyone, and thank you for being here. About a year ago, at the time of the House of Councillors election last July, I was simply one member of the House of Representatives, not holding an official post in either the Government or the House. Even so, many candidates asked me to deliver speeches in support of their campaigns, and as I traveled across the country, I repeatedly heard young people say that the policies of the Liberal Democratic Party lacked a vision for the future. Amid rising prices, rice shortages, and declining industrial competitiveness, I was acutely aware of the indefinable sense of stagnation that had come to pervade Japan as a whole. A conviction began to well up within me: Japan is capable of far more than this; we must somehow make changes to the status quo; and unless we act now, it will be too late. I subsequently decided to make one more attempt in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, which was, unexpectedly, held last autumn.I wanted to transform the anxiety the people of Japan feel about their lives today and their future into hope, and ensure that young people will have places where they can work and build their futures. The world was at a major turning point. In the Middle East, the situation in Gaza was spilling over into the wider region, while Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was becoming protracted. Advanced countries were making a decisive shift away from leaving matters to the market and toward strategic industrial policies pursued through public-private cooperation. Japan, too, was being called upon to formulate a national strategy that squarely confronts these historic changes. I prevailed in the LDP presidential election against just such a backdrop. I then approached the House of Representatives election in February -- the election in which the people chose which party would govern -- with my own position as Prime Minister at stake. As a key campaign pledge, I set out a course of responsible and proactive fiscal policy. I appealed strongly to the Japanese people that unless we undertake major policy shifts now, it will be too late, and I sought their mandate. It was truly an election fought with the aim of setting the Japanese economy visibly and powerfully in motion. The result was that the people entrusted us with a large number of seats in the House and gave us a powerful mandate to carry these important policy shifts through to completion, whatever it might take. I have devoted myself fully to this special session of the Diet, believing that my mission is to steadily deliver on those pledges. During this Diet session, all 64 bills submitted by the Government were enacted, including the Act on the Establishment of the National Intelligence Council and the amended Imperial House Law. I understand that, among ordinary Diet sessions and special sessions of comparable scope, this is only the fourth time since the end of the Sec