Introduction — Significance of the Guidelines
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) published the Economic Security Management Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) on 23 January 2026. The Guidelines describe how companies should position economic security as a management issue, reflect it in their strategies and address it under an effective governance framework. This article focuses on the three economic security management pillars the Guidelines identify — ensuring autonomy, indispensability and effective governance in responding to economic security issues.
Basic Economic Security Framework
Economic security can broadly be organized around the concepts of autonomy and indispensability. Autonomy requires the mitigation of dependency risks — reducing the risk of supply chain disruptions by avoiding excessive dependence on any particular country or region for goods or services that are essential to economic activity and/or the livelihood of the population. From a company’s perspective, autonomy means that the company can stably supply its products and services even in the face of unforeseen events such as natural disasters, geopolitical tensions or the spread of infectious diseases. This can be achieved through initiatives such as strengthening supply chain resilience, diversifying procurement sources, layering supply methods and enhancing cybersecurity measures.
Indispensability means making a country indispensable to the world economy — ensuring that the country’s products, technologies and/or services will be difficult to replace and that the world economy would struggle to function smoothly without them. For companies, this means ensuring that their products, technologies or services are indispensable to their business partners and to the international community. This requires the development of competitive technologies and measures to prevent their leakage to competitors.
Positioning of the Guidelines
Japan’s economic security-related laws, regulations, policies, and guidelines — such as the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act and the Economic Security Promotion Act — have developed in stages. The Guidelines form part of this broader framework, but are distinct in that they do not impose new legal obligations on companies.
Nevertheless, the Guidelines direct attention to economic security risks that cannot be adequately addressed through legal compliance alone and encourage companies to respond voluntarily and strategically. The Guidelines state that where a company’s management acts in accordance with the Guidelines, it may serve as evidence that directors and officers have fulfilled their duty of due care, making the Guidelines difficult to disregard in practice. It is also important to note that the Guidelines apply broadly to all companies and are not limited to specific industries or companies of a certain size. However, with respect to companies to which economic security–related laws and regulations, such as the Economic Security Promotion Act, apply, the Guidelines likewise expect a particularly proactive approach.
Three Basic Principles
The Guidelines begin by presenting the following three basic principles that a company’s management should follow.
- The first principle is to accurately understand one’s own business and its attendant economic security risks. Companies are expected to understand their value chains, country- and region-specific dependencies and core technologies and information and to be able to estimate the potential impact of risks in order to consider appropriate responses.
- The second principle is to view economic security measures as investments rather than costs. Even where such measures place short-term pressure on profits, they may, from a medium- to long-term perspective, enhance supply stability and reliability, thereby contributing to the maintenance and enhancement of corporate value and earning the support of stakeholders.
- The third principle is to engage in dialogue with the relevant stakeholders. By sharing information and perceptions with business partners, financial institutions, shareholders, governments and others during normal times, companies can prevent risks from materializing and mitigate their impact when contingencies arise.
Specific Autonomy, Indispensability and Governance Measures
With respect to ensuring autonomy, the Guidelines recommend fostering management awareness, optimizing supply chains, establishing cross-functional organizational structures and engaging in dialogue with stakeholders. In particular, they emphasize the importance of cross-functional collaboration not only between production and procurement but also between legal, finance and accounting teams.
To assure indispensability, the Guidelines call for enhancing management awareness premised on measures to prevent the leakage of technologies and information, the formulation of medium- to long-term research and development strategies, the construction of company-wide management frameworks and organizational cultures, communication and dialogue with stakeholders and swift and resolute responses in the event of leakage.
Finally, to strengthen economic security-related governance, the Guidelines highlight the importance of gathering information, identifying, analyzing and evaluating risks and opportunities, considering, implementing and reviewing response measures and establishing effective organizational structures. Building a framework unconstrained by short-term profit concerns that enables decision-making from a medium- to long-term and company-wide perspective is considered essential.
Conclusion
The Guidelines are grounded in the recognition that companies themselves are key to supporting Japan’s overall economic security by enhancing their own autonomy and indispensability.
Companies are expected to begin progressively implementing measures while closely monitoring and responding to future developments, such as the publication of best practices and updates to the Guidelines.
