G7 calls for Japanese food bans to be ‘immediately’ lifted after China’s curbs

The G7 trade ministers, in a statement after a weekend meeting on Osaka, did not mention China but they also denounced what they consider its rising economic coercion through trade.

“We deplore actions to weaponise economic dependencies and commit to build on free, fair, and mutually beneficial economic and trade relationships,” said the 10-page statement.

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The waste water discharges, which are expected to continue for decades, have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighbouring countries including South Korea, where hundreds of people staged protest rallies.

The G7 – the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada – also expressed “concern” over recent control measures on the export of critical minerals.

China, the world’s top graphite producer, this month announced export curbs on the key material, used in electric vehicle batteries, in another bid to control critical mineral supply in response to challenges over its global manufacturing dominance.

The G7 ministers “shared the need, a genuinely strong one, to reduce dependence on a particular country” for the supply of critical resources, said Yasutoshi Nishimura, trade minister of the host Japan. “We completely agreed to build resilient and reliable supply chains” for critical minerals, semiconductors and batteries, he told a press conference.

The ministers reaffirmed their concerns on “a wide and evolving range of non-market policies” that include “pervasive, opaque and trade-distortive industrial subsidies” and forced technology transfer, the statement said.

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Additional reporting by Associated Press