Japanese Economic Engagement With the EU: Geopolitics Meets Business

Abstract

During the recent years the world has experienced a shift towards complex relations being formed in the growing interlacing between geoeconomics and geopolitics. This paper aims at bringing geoeconomics and geopolitics on the macroeconomic level together with the potential implications for Japanese firms operating in Europe and more specifically within the EU Single Market. The paper grounds the analysis within international political economy, international business and economic geography. This broad, eclectic theoretical foundation enables the analysis to contribute to a deeper understanding of how firms respond to and potentially drive the political development of trade and investment relations. Hence, the paper strives to examine how geopolitics alter the flows of trade and investments, but also to map a new configuration taking place in parallel on the firm level of industrial dynamics and economic geographical footprint.