Ambassador Yasuhiko Yoshida is a Senior Advisor to The Asia Group, based in Japan. He is a former career civil servant with 37+ years of experience primarily at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). He is a trade, industry and economic policy expert with extensive knowledge on trade negotiations (including on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)), economic security, digital trade/e-commerce, industrial policy, global value chain (GVC), trade control administration based on Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law, intellectual property protection and technology theft prevention, quality infrastructure, overseas development aid (ODA), human rights due diligence (DD), and related academic research.
Ambassador Yoshida served as Ambassador in charge of Economic Diplomacy and Deputy Director-General at Economic Affairs Bureau of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) from 2019 to 2021. In this capacity, he served as chief negotiator for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which he concluded with 10 ASEAN countries, Australia, NZ, China and Korea in 2020. He had also held several senior trade policy positions at METI, including Deputy Director-General for Trade Policy (especially for South Asia, including India, and Oceania) and as Japan’s Senior Official for APEC from 2016 to 2019. In this period, he led various initiatives to strengthen Japan-India economic and industrial ties by working with Indian federal and state governments and other stakeholders. He also promoted Quality Infrastructure in the context of the Quad. Most recently, he was engaged in the business and human rights issue in GVC in METI’s Trade Policy Bureau.
Ambassador Yoshida was the chief author of three government white papers, including one on international trade policy. He also served as Vice Chair of Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) from 2021 to 2023 and as Managing Executive Officer of Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan’s export credit agency (ECA) from 2015 to 2016. Moreover, he worked on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Entrepreneurship at the Secretariat of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris from 2007 to 2010 and at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) from 2004 to 2006.
Ambassador Yoshida holds a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a M.A. in Political Science from Stanford University, as well as a B.A. in Economics from Tokyo University.