The Japanese government has been giving serious attention to dropping the tax free deposit system. One of the reasons for this is as a means of making the Japanese people save less and spend more in order to expand domestic demand and ease the trade imbalance. Another reason is to enhance tax revenues for the financially strapped Japanese government. The Ministry of Finance and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were initially inclined to initiate such a revision as early as April, 1986. Again foreign interests have no powerful countervailing constituency in the Japanese political calculus.
Foreign governments make toothless threats.
Japanese voters do not.