Today in Tokyo, the government of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida approved a ban on exporting luxury cars and other goods to Russia as part of a broader package of economic sanctions in reaction to the country’s invasion of Russia. Ukraine.
The embargo on cars and art is expected to take effect on April 5.
Showing Japan’s solidarity with the United States and European countries, which have already imposed significant sanctions, Kishida said he seeks to increase pressure on Russian oligarchs who have financially supported Vladimir Putin.
Cars like many Lexus models, Toyota Land Cruisers and even many used cars, adding used European models, make up the lion’s share of shipments to Russia from Japan. These shipments totaled 627 billion yen ($5 billion) in 2020, according to a government source.
Japan imposed a ban on luxury goods exports to North Korea in 2006 after conducting a nuclear test, threatening the Sea of Japan and beyond. Tokyo temporarily imposed a blanket ban on imports and exports to Pyongyang.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has already seen Western powers impose heavy sanctions on Moscow, with the freezing of Russian central bank assets, banning major Russian monetary institutions Visa and MasterCard, and enforcing export bans.
In another show of solidarity with Western countries, Japan shed Russia’s “most-favored-nation” status, which had given the country the most productive trading situations imaginable in key products under World Trade Organization rules.
Japan’s relations with Russia have been strained for decades thanks to Moscow’s illegal seizure of four Japanese islands, called the Northern Territories, at the end of World War II. Japan has been searching for those islands since 1945, but without success. No wonder the Japanese government has protested against Russia over its recent army training on the islands, trainings that involved more than 3,000 soldiers.
In other news, the Japanese Defense Ministry claimed to have 4 Russian warships in the seas of northeastern Japan and assumed the ships were headed to support the Russian war effort in Ukraine.
If a cessation of fighting is quickly achieved, we may be expecting an escalation of sanctions, a fact that would be negative only for Russia.