New Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is said to dislike the term "Ishibanomics," but he's certainly enamored of what could be termed "electionomics," i.e., positions taken mostly to run up the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) vote share in coming election. Examples include:

 

1)     instructing the Bank of Japan not to raise interest rates (in a rare violation of the BOJ's independence), a reversal of past statements.

 

2)     promising to raise the minimum wage from ¥1,054 at present to ¥1,500 by 2029, a goal that would require the politically impossible step of hiking it by 7.3% per year;

 

3)     ordering his ministers to prepare a big supplementary budget to boost economic growth, while backing off from some of the tax hikes on the very affluent that he had proposed just a few weeks earlier. Moreover, he seems quite vague about his notions regarding tax hikes on corporations. This all contradicts his past stance as a fiscal hawk who wanted to bring down the budget deficit.

 

            All of this makes market players publicly wonder whether Ishiba will stick to these economic stances once the election is over. No one really knows.

 

For details, see https://richardkatz.substack.com/p/pm-ishibas-electionomics

 

Richard Katz

The Contest For Japan's Economic Future: Entrepreneurs Vs. Corporate Giants