An Analysis of Japanese Coking Coal Procurement Policies: The Canadian and Australian Experience

F. Quei Quo is a political science professor at Simon Fraser University.

This is a book that should have been published years ago. By the time the findings of the research are publicly known the issue “doesn’t matter any more,” as the author himself puts it. The book deals with the issue of “how to respond to the Japanese oligopsonistic approach in their purchase of coking coal overseas.” Using the Australian and Canadian experience, the author reaches the conclusion that it is “exceedingly difficult to implement a collective action” on the part of the suppliers to encounter the Japanese steel mills’ collective procurement system. Not only the availability of alternative sources of supply but also technological innovations weaken the supply-side in the coking-coal business. Most detrimental of all is our tendency to rely too much on the market economies for “fair deals.”

This study should be valuable for policy makers in the future trades between countries of different practices in some strategic commodities.