apan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has pushed through one of the country’s largest fiscal packages in years, with her cabinet approving a sweeping JPY 21.3 trillion ($135.4 billion) stimulus plan on Friday. The move marks a key fulfillment of her pledge to embrace aggressive, pro-growth spending.
The package includes JPY 17.7 trillion in general account expenditures—well above last year’s JPY 13.9 trillion—and an additional JPY 2.7 trillion in tax cuts. It represents the biggest round of fiscal support since the pandemic and is aimed at easing the strain of rising prices on both households and companies, according to local media reports. The strategy runs counter to traditional economic thinking that such large-scale stimulus typically fuels, rather than mitigates, inflation.
Despite the inflation-hedge narrative often tied to bitcoin, the crypto asset continued to slip. BTC fell 0.8% to $85,480, extending its sharp retreat from the all-time high of $126,000 set on Oct. 8.
