Japan €™S Foreign Trade: Contemporary Trends And Russia

The paper analyses contemporary trends in Japan’s foreign trade andprovides an estimation of Japan-Russia foreign trade cooperation. The study demonstrates that Japan, under the Strategy of the Global Outreach, is aiming to increase trade, economic, and investment relations with the developing countries, particularly in the Asia- Pacific region, by establishing bilateral free trade and economic partnership agreements and promoting negotiations on multilateral free trade agreements in the region. In addition, the paper shows that Japan-Russia’s export sare primarily comprised of high value- added products that are traded in exchange for the naturalresource-oriented imports. By calculating trade intensity and trade complementarity indices, the authors conclude that at present Japan and Russia can hardly be regarded as «ideal» trade partners, nevertheless, there exist some gradual changes in the foreign trade structure. The authors corroborate the notion that the planned political initiatives of 2016– 2017 regarding incremental development of bilateral cooperation can boost further such structural changes in the foreign trade cooperation between the two countries.