{"id":310057,"date":"2025-11-26T14:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T14:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/310057\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T14:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T14:08:11","slug":"japans-populist-debt-fuelled-spending-plan-alarms-economists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/310057\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s populist debt-fuelled spending plan alarms economists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japanese Prime Minister <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/topics\/sanae-takaichi?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sanae Takaichi<\/a> faced opposition questioning for the first time since unveiling her 21.3 trillion yen (US$136.5 billion) stimulus package, defending the debt-fuelled plan in parliament on Wednesday amid concerns over the yen\u2019s slide and Japan\u2019s worsening fiscal health.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">During the session, Takaichi said the package was needed to support households struggling with rising costs, adding that her government would take \u201cnecessary measures\u201d after assessing whether recent currency movements reflected economic fundamentals.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Takaichi\u2019s cabinet signed off on the 21.3 trillion yen (US$136.5 billion) package on Friday, including 17.7 trillion yen in fresh spending \u2013 the largest stimulus since the pandemic and her first major economic gambit since taking office.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Cash handouts and subsidies form the core of the package, aimed at voters battered by inflation that has outpaced wage growth.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Headline measures include one-off payments to families of 20,000 yen per child, extended subsidies for winter power bills and local measures such as vouchers for rice and coupons for electricity.<\/p>\n<p>Economists seem to be unanimously not in favour of this planMartin Schulz, policy economist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi faced opposition questioning for the first time since unveiling her 21.3 trillion yen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[256,64,63,99,512,1298,2490,164,1295,35431,16561,5465,941,175913,175912,11462,130747,4243,175911],"class_list":["post-310057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-ai","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-china","tag-diet","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-food","tag-fuel","tag-fujitsu","tag-inflation","tag-japan","tag-japan-innovation-party","tag-japanese-exports","tag-liberal-democratic-party","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-us-tariffs","tag-yen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}