U.S.-Japan Economic Security and Technology Cooperation

Amid an era of rapid technological advances and a shifting geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific, the United States and Japan have both identified economic security as a core strategic priority. Competition for technological leadership and concerns over emerging dual-use technologies have complicated trade and supply chain relations by blurring the lines between market-based economic interests and national security priorities, while expanding global connectivity, digital commerce, and cross-border data flows have introduced new risks and challenges as well as opportunities. Meanwhile, leadership transitions in the United States and Japan raise questions about each country’s approach to the changing strategic environment in the region.

Please join the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) on Tuesday, January 28, from 12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m. for a discussion with Michael Beeman, Daisuke Kawai, and Crystal Pryor on how the United States and Japan are approaching economic security under an evolving strategic environment.

12:00 p.m. – Opening remarks

• Michael Wills, President, The National Bureau of Asian Research

12:05 p.m. – Welcome remarks

• Makoto Iyori, Consul-General of Japan in Seattle

12:10 p.m. – Panel discussion: Economic security in the Trump and Ishiba era

• Michael Beeman, Visiting Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea, and APEC
• Saori Katada, Director, Center for International Studies, University of Southern California; Nonresident Fellow, NBR

12:50 p.m. – Panel discussion: The role of emerging technology and export controls on economic security

• Daisuke Kawai, Deputy Director, Economic Security Research Program,
  Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo
• Crystal Pryor, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Policy Research, University at Albany, SUNY

1:30 p.m. – Event concludes

Michael Beeman is a Visiting Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), where he researches and writes about trade policy issues such as economic security between the United States and Asia. From January 2017 until January 2023, he was Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea and APEC at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). In that role, he led the renegotiation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement, among other initiatives. Prior to this, he served in other capacities at USTR and, between 1998 and 2004, at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Politics from the University of Oxford in 1998 and an M.A. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1991. He is the author of (Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2024) and Public Policy and Economic Competition in Japan (Routledge, 2003).

Saori Katada is Professor of International Relations and Diretor of the Center for International Studies at University of Southern California, and is a Nonresident Fellow at NBR. Previously, she served as vice president of the International Studies Association and on the editorial team of Review of International Political Economy.

Her book was published by Columbia University Press in 2020, and its Japanese version was published from Nikkei Press in 2022. Her other book Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001) received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award.

Daisuke Kawai is a Project Assistant Professor and the Deputy Director of the Economic Security Programme at RCAST, The University of Tokyo. He also serves as an Asia Fellow at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and Senior Advisor for Quad Strategic Planning to the Quad Investors Network (QUIN).

Previously, he was a Research Fellow for Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). In 2024, he was nominated as a David Rockefeller Fellow (DRF) of the Trilateral Commission and appointed as the representative of the DRF Asia-Pacific Group.

Crystal Pryor is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Policy Research, SUNY Albany. She is also Senior Advisor at the Pacific Forum and an Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington (2016) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University (2016-2017). Crystal's dissertation was on strategic trade control practices in advanced countries. Crystal holds Master’s Degrees in Political Science from the University of Tokyo (2009) and the University of Washington (2012).

After graduating from Brown University with a B.A. with Honors in International Relations (2004), Crystal spent 6 years living in Tokyo, where she was a Japanese government (MEXT) research scholar at the University of Tokyo before working in the Culture Section at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

Host or Publisher The National Bureau of Asian Research