Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi meets with Donald Trump at the White House
“Sanaenomics”. The economic policies implemented by the Japanese Prime Minister, which have already earned the right to their own name, draw a heterodox map unthinkable for the traditional right.
The ongoing transformations in Japan bring unexpected news to the global economic and geopolitical scenario.
A few months after taking office as head of the Japanese government, the prime minister Sanae Takaichi called elections.
It was a risky movebut which resulted in a notable success: the conservative prime minister achieved an overwhelming majority of 2/3 of representatives in the Lower House.
This comfortable majority gives him a large margin of maneuver to move forward with the reforms he wants to implement, at a time when: his popularity index is very high: it fluctuates between 60% and 70%.
Takaichi foi supported by Donald Trump during the campaign. It has been repeatedly compared to Margaret Thatcher. Its geopolitical position links it, seamlessly, to the United States. Your agenda is nationalistthe values it promotes are decidedly conservative and it has focused on increasing military spending.
Leads the traditional Japanese conservative party, but moved it to the rightwhich allowed him abruptly stop Sanseito, the Japanese extreme right. Something similar happened to the British Tories after Brexit.
But Takaichi did more: he took an unexpected economic direction to a right-wing force — what they already call Sanaenomicssays .
A little orthodox way of Takaichi
When Sanae Takaichi took over as Prime Minister of Japan, the country was facing a scenario familiar to many Western nations: rising prices, stagnant wages and growing discontent among the population.
Takaichi’s response was, not minimal, unexpected for a right-wing government: support for families, energy subsidies and in health care, regional subsidies and benefits for families with children.
The stated objective was simple: increase the net salary of citizens and create a virtuous circle in the economy.
With solid parliamentary support, Takaichi shows no signs of retreat. Your plan is based on three large pillars.
First, a industrial reinforcement program which channels investment into strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing and defense, while reducing external dependence in critical areas, such as medicines produced in China.
Second, a five-year territorial revitalization plan, which invests in rural areas by creating jobs, increasing productivity and improving public transport, including autonomous vehicles.
Finally, the attempt to attract Tokyo-based companies for regions with less economic dynamism.
This set of measures goes against the dominant trend on the right of recent years, which favored spending cuts, tax reductions and slimming of the State.
Takaichi’s model, which some already call Sanaenomics, bets on increasing public expenditure and pronounced state interventionism.
In another context, the markets would have penalized hard this approach; for much less, recalls El Confidencial, in the United Kingdom, after just 44 days in office.
In the Japanese case, the markets seem to have assimilated the bet: If economic growth materializes, it will generate enough tax revenue to address the problems of an already very high debt.
As Sanaenomics are clearly distinguished from the options followed by other rights. Trump bets on DOGE cutstax cuts and deregulation; Milei wields the budget chainsaw; Orbán and Meloni have their own formulas.
This diversity reveals something important: there is no single recipe for contemporary rights. THE nationalism once again had a determining weightand each State adapts its economic policy to its specific needs. THE economic orthodoxy has lost its regulatory role that he once played.
In the Japanese case, Takaichi’s choices also have a clear geopolitical logic. The country is a close ally of the United Stateswhich explains the increase in investment in defense and the alignment in the technological race.
But there are a second factor: China maintains its internal cohesion by continuously improving the standard of living of its citizens, and Japan, like Europe during the Cold War, knows that internal stability is essential to resist Beijing’s influence.
As Sanaenomics thus fulfills a double function: they are a response to internal economic pressures and a strategy of geopolitical affirmation. your success or failure will be an important test to the path that the right may follow in the world in the coming decades.
