Why is Trading with different countries so important and why did the US force japan to trade internationally even if they didn’t want to ?
In: Economics
Trading is important because it’s sharing resources between countries, or you might end up repeating history with countries conquering and subjugating each other for resources instead.
Let’s say my country has great growing soil for crops and your country is high in raw materials like iron. But your people can’t eat iron, and mine can’t build with vegetables. So one option is to go to war with each other and burn a ton of resources and lose a bunch of our people in the process.
Or the other option is I give you food and you give me iron. That way we both thrive, our people are fed, and we have raw materials to construct with. It’s a win-win for all.
It’s worth noting that the image of Japan as this totally isolated place is kind of a misnomer.
Japan throughout the Edo period did trade internationally, but trade was strictly regulated by the central government and the ability of foreigners to travel Japan and access its markets was heavily constrained. The Japanese government by the time of Perry had essentially stopped trading with anyone but the Dutch and a lot of that trade happened off Japanese soil.
But so did trade with everyone else. It’s was pretty commonplace in this era for Japanese sailors to leave Japan, trade with European merchants outside of Shogunate authority and then travel back. Unofficial trade was common and prosperous through Korea via Tsushima, and the Okinawan and Ryukyu islands which existed out of direct Shogunate control.
For the US however they wanted more direct and open trade access and they wanted to use Japanese ports to trade further with Asia as well as whale, fish, and sell goods more directly to the Japanese market where they could get a better price than the leap-frog trade that existed under the Shogunate.
Say you and I are countries and we each have two important industries: Food and Energy. If we had personal disagreements and went to war we would both have food and energy. But say a third more powerful country forced me to get my food from you and you to get your energy from me. For a while we both might still be able to produce food and energy, but over time my people would stop producing food and your people would stop producing energy because it would no longer be profitable. If we then had a personal disagreement and tried to go to war, I wouldn’t have any food and you wouldn’t have any energy. We would be forced to compromise and work together to meet our people’s needs.
This strategy is sometimes termed globalization and is a hallmark of US foreign policy. As the more powerful third party in many situations the US likes to force nations, like post-WWII Japan, to trade with its allies. That way if the nation goes to war its less likely that it will be against the US or its allies. An additional benefit of this policy is that once nations are strong armed into trade agreements and domestic production atrophies, the US can sanction disobedient nations and its allies will comply. Interestingly, such agreements make it more difficult for the US to go to war with the signatories because such a war would affect the US’s allies.
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