Japan's policy-makers stubbornly hold to the untenable dogma of mercantilism—the idea that a nation's prosperity depends on the foreign trade surpluses it generates, where exports and outward investments are good, imports impoverish and inward foreign investments are bad. Especially in the context of efforts to resolve the financial crisis and to rebuild the global economic system, there are several problems when the world's second-largest economy adheres to mercantilism. First, it flies in the face of the most basic economic principles like specialization, flexible prices determined by unhindered supply and demand or the primacy of productivity. Mercantilism is a zero-sum approach, long ago discredited, to the wealth and welfare of nations; a pre-Enlightenment, pre-modern mental frame that denies the most basic value generation premises of trade, investment, specialization and comparative advantage. Even as Japan's trade surplus has been dropping rapidly with the global slowdown, many economists would agree with the verdict of Nikolas Müller-Plantenberg from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: “Japan's large and sustained current account surpluses are at the root of its current economic problems.”

Second, it is philosophically indefensible, relying as it does on exceptionalism. As Princeton University's Peter Singer points out, most major secular and religious ethical traditions adhere to some version of the Golden Rule principle: act towards others as you would have them act towards you. The Japanese government appeals to this principle in its call for universal intellectual property protection, or in its discourse on poverty in Africa.