Is it legal for the US to impose sanctions unilaterally on Japanese products?
Japan has threatened to take the US to the World Trade Organisation if trade sanctions are used, and urged Washington to enter talks with Tokyo on the issue. US officials say they are looking at measures that would be legal under the WTO agreement. This could severely limit the sort of trade sanctions that might be used against Japan, though the WTO agreement does contain exceptions for species conservation. Who has the most to lose if the dispute escalates into a trade war? In principle, Japan is more vulnerable should this dispute develop into a wider trade war because it exports far more to the US than the other way round. Also working against Tokyo is the fact that its economy is only now emerging from recession, while the US economy is currently extremely strong. In recent years however, the US has tended not to use heavy trade pressure on Japan, as it did in the 1980s and early 1990s in an attempt to open up the Japanese economy to US imports. Japanese officials have hinted that
