Whoever wins the US presidential election, Japan will stay on its reform path as cooperation between the world's two largest economies has grown increasingly close, analysts said.
Japan can be expected to maintain its policy of curbing public spending and debt while easing regulations to support growth and trade.
Gone are the bitter bilateral trade frictions up to the 1990s over Japanese car exports and protected farm markets and Washington's calls on Tokyo to spend billions of dollars on building dams and bridges to spur domestic demand.
The Japan-US relationship has matured into seeking ways of benefiting each other by opening focused sectors, such as Japan's telecommunications and pharmaceutical markets, to foreign investment.
Chinese exports to the US market have now outpaced those from Japan, also cooling off US-Japan trade rows.
As the major market democracies have shifted to sustained non-inflationary growth, the main task for Japan and the US is to balance the budgets and pay down the debt.
Economists say they expect continuity in US policies which would provide some stability to the world's economies and markets after the Nov. 2 election between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry.
"Whoever wins the presidential election, the US fiscal policy will not change for now, with a Kerry administration budget policy not being released until next October," said Susumu Takahashi, chief economist at Japan Research Institute.
"As for its monetary policy, Fed chairman [Alan] Greenspan is believed to be dictating it regardless of who becomes the next president," Takahashi said.
"Therefore, I don't expect any major backlash on Japan for now," he said.
Under Bush or Kerry, the US policy on the currency market is likely to stay on course as the US economy, like others, is forecast to slow down next year, analysts said.
Washington will probably continue publicly endorsing a strong dollar for fear of a sell-off in US securities while urging its trade partners -- notably China and Japan -- not to guide their currencies lower against the US unit to make their exports cheaper, they said.
Even when Tokyo conducted massive dollar-buying intervention to prevent the yen from surging and wrecking Japan's economic recovery last year, Washington did not reject it completely.
"A Bush re-election would be business as usual for Prime Minister [Junichiro] Koizumi," said Akiyoshi Takumori, chief economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management.
"The Koizumi administration has been cooperative with the US on many fronts and in return gained some endorsement for the intervention on the ground that would support Japan's recovery," he said.
Despite opposition among the public, Japan sent troops to Iraq on a humanitarian mission and kept them there, its first deployment since World War II to an area where fighting is continuing.
The only notable impact on the real economy from the election would be that a Kerry victory could send crude oil prices down from speculative record highs as he is seen to take a more flexible and dovish stance on the Middle East and war on terror, Takahashi said.
"The unknown is whether a Kerry administration would take a tougher stance in negotiating trade issues as speculated, but I don't think the bilateral ties would become as tense as during the Clinton administration" Takumori said.
"Koizumi's reform agenda suits both Japan and the US," he said.
The prime minister, in office since April 2001, on Tuesday said his reform agenda had now come to a "crucial moment" with the restructuring and privatization of the postal service.
The move is seen as freeing up huge funds and making them available for investment by the private sector, bolstering the economy in the process.
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