The Article II Mandate - Forging a Stronger Economic Alliance between the United States and Japan

To explore opportunities for greater economic cooperation between the United States and Japan in third countries, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington and the Asia Pacific Initiative (API) in Tokyo embarked on a joint research project in the spring of 2017. [...] VIII | The Article II Mandate: Forging a Stronger Economic Alliance between the United States and Japan Introduction and Overview The United States and Japan are the world’s two largest market economies, bound together by a decades- old alliance that has become the lynchpin of stability and security in the Asia-Pacific region. [...] and Japanese strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region are substantially—and increasingly—aligned, and economic cooperation between the two countries has the potential to advance those shared interests in the region and beyond. [...] S.–Japan alliance and our economic cooperation, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the focus of this study.8 The United States has three core interests in the region: protecting the security of the United States and its allies, expanding trade and economic opportunities, and supporting universal democratic norms. [...] These are the arenas in which the economic competition of the next few decades will be fought, and both the United States and Japan have an enormous stake in ensuring that high-standard, market- based approaches to internet freedom, cross-border data flows, and a limited role for the state in the marketplace prevail.