ALL things considered, the month of May ended well for Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister. He hosted his fellow leaders from the rich world’s club, the G7, at a summit at Ise in Mie prefecture last week. It went well. He welcomed them at a Shinto shrine founded 1,300 years ago. Just after the summit Barack Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, which an American atom bomb levelled on August 6th 1945. Japanese of all ages and backgrounds were moved by his speech, and by his embrace of a survivor. Mr Abe basked in the reflected political glow.
That gave the prime minister ample cover to announce, on June 1st, that he would put off raising Japan’s consumption tax from 8% to 10% from April of next year to October 2019. This marks the second such dodge; the previous one occurred in November 2014. Mr Abe’s advisers would have preferred to postpone it indefinitely, but settled for a point after his term as president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is currently due to end, in September 2018.
Economically, the postponement looks prudent. Japan’s economy is struggling. Many worried that a second tax...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/285RYIQ
EmoticonEmoticon