13 Facts About Yasutoshi Nishimura

Yasutoshi Nishimura is a Japanese politician who served as the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry from August 2022 until December 2023.

Yasutoshi Nishimura resigned from his cabinet posts in December 2023 amid allegations of a slush fund involving himself and several other ministers and members of the LDP.

Yasutoshi Nishimura joined the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1985 and graduated from Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland in 1992 while in the ministry.

Yasutoshi Nishimura was running for the LDP presidential elections which was held September 28,2009, and came in third after Sadakazu Tanigaki, who was elected, and Kono Taro.

Yasutoshi Nishimura served as acting director, Land, Infrastructure and Transport Division of LDP, Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Chairman, Policy Research Council of LDP, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of LDP's Shadow Cabinet, Senior Vice Minister of Cabinet Office.

Since September 2019, Yasutoshi Nishimura is serving as minister for economic and fiscal policy; economic revitalization; social security reform; the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and as minister for COVID-19 pandemic response from March 2020 until October 2021.

On 8 July 2021, Yasutoshi Nishimura announced the government would seek financial institutions "to lobby [their] customers that operate bars and restaurants to comply with government requests to temporarily close" and possibly to withhold loans to holdouts, as well as to request beverage wholesale companies to stop trading with such businesses.

The government retracted the policy a day later with the chief cabinet secretary Katsunobu Kato stating "he had instructed Yasutoshi Nishimura to be more careful about what he says during news conferences".

In 2013, Yasutoshi Nishimura has denied the accusation that he used a prostitute during his 2012 visit to Vietnam.

On 1 October 2021, Yasutoshi Nishimura announced that Japan will likely becoming a living with COVID-19 endemic phase.

Yasutoshi Nishimura said the government will keep its stakes in Sakhalin-II, one of the world's largest integrated and export-oriented oil and gas projects, owned by Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

News media reported the following month, citing sources, that Yasutoshi Nishimura was suspected to have received unreported payments.

Yasutoshi Nishimura is affiliated to the openly revisionist lobby Nippon Kaigi, He advocates its main causes, which are: the revision of the constitution, the right for collective self-defense, visits to Yasukuni Shrine.