Suzuki graduated from Kyoto University in 2002 with a major in international politics. He heard about fantastic opportunities in the Foreign Ministry Office from an assistant of the Ministry and decided to apply. Suzuki's interests landed him a position in the Ministry's WTO Division. Unlike Maehira, who worked for one year, Suzuki served as an officer at the Ministry for two years, solidifying his knowledge of the Ministry's dealings with the WTO.
Suzuki explained the intricate dealings of the WTO, which is based in Geneva and is composed of 148 member countries. The member nations of the WTO gather in roundtable discussions to negotiate international trade policy. Negotiations occur in sessions, lasting several years, and the current session is called the Doha Development Agenda for a Qatari city. When Suzuki started at the Ministry in 2002, the Doha Round was just beginning. The ultimate goal, according to Japanese protocol, is to achieve tariff reductions and improvement of trade rules.
In this vein, the focus of Suzuki's job involved working with the administration's budget committee and proposing Japanese budget reforms, which are in turn forwarded to the Japanese embassy in Geneva. Suzuki described this process as being extremely complicated due to the various nations' conflicting interests. "These negotiations are very difficult because each country has sensitive products," he said.
Working in the division, Suzuki's duties were far from the mindless administrative tasks one thinks of when one ponders bureaucracy. Suzuki was quite versatile in the work he completed for the division. Often, he wrote drafts of speaking memos for the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and senior officials. He also was instrumental in the determination of Japanese policy in the Administration and Finance Committee of the WTO. Other jobs entailed writing government pamphlets, speaking to high school students about Japanese trade policy and traveling with the Japanese WTO delegation.
Suzuki described some of the more observatory duties he fulfilled. "My division had a weekly meeting with the deputy secretary, director-general and deputy director-general of economic affairs," he said. "I always prepared papers used in this meeting and took notes. I didn't have the right to speak." Nevertheless, Suzuki relished his presence at these meetings. "I was able to learn many things from the meetings: how senior official made decisions; how they handled international and domestic circumstances; and how to manage the whole trade negotiations. It was a good opportunity for me to see the scenes of high-level diplomatic policy decisions," he said.
Suzuki described the progression of work. A typical day would involve "reading telegrams which are sent from Japanese embassies abroad and analyzing foreign countries' policies in the WTO trade negotiation, reading proposal documents made by the WTO or other countries and deciding Japanese policy toward these proposals." Suzuki was also given the responsibility of "making decisions and sending telegrams to the Japanese embassy in Geneva which instructed Japanese delegations how to act and speak in committees." Then a response from the committee in Geneva would be sent back to Suzuki, and the analysis process would begin anew.
One interesting job during Suzuki's tenure revolved around negotiations in which Lebanon attempted to attain admittance to the WTO. Suzuki explained that "each country that wants to join [the WTO] has to negotiate with the countries that already joined the WTO. My job was to deal with the negotiations with Lebanon and the developing country's process." Specifically, Suzuki was responsible for determining whether Lebanon's qualifications were acceptable to Japanese policy. "I had to examine their domestic trade rules," said Suzuki. In general, Suzuki looks at a country's tariffs. "We can say if one product's tariff of the joining country is high, we can point at it to reduce that tariff," he explained. Ultimately, Lebanon wasn't admitted.
Another major issue within the WTO involved whether WTO member nations should introduce two-year budgets to the WTO's Administration and Finance Committee rather than the standard one-year budget. "Though introducing a two-year budget had interest for member countries because it can reduce our jobs by not having to discuss budgets every year, we have to make this reform consistent with the WTO agreements," Suzuki explained
Initially, "other countries endorsed the idea of changing the WTO agreements," Suzuki continued. "I thought changing the agreement was dangerous because this minor change of an agreement might encourage some countries to claim to change other more important agreements which were already agreed among countries." As a result, Suzuki consulted an international law expert within the Ministry, and "drafted a telegram which proposed not to change the agreement but to change the interpretation of the agreement."
After several sessions, the Japanese delegation agreed to Suzuki's proposal and made it the official Japanese policy. Other nations followed suit.
Although the work that Suzuki put in at the Ministry allowed him only three or four hours of sleep a night with regular working hours from 9:30 a.m. until 2 a.m., Suzuki enjoyed his time at the Ministry. "In many jobs which I was in charge of, I was one of a few people or the only person who knew about it the most in Japan," he said. "So these jobs were challenging but exciting." Now that Suzuki is in the U.S., his hours are less demanding. After Amherst, Suzuki hopes to work abroad, either in the United States or in Asia.
Suzuki and Maehira both chose to study at Amherst because of its strong reputation. Both selected the college over graduate schools to truly immerse themselves in the collegiate environment and receive instruction and one-on-one time from professors. Suzuki explained that Amherst's reputation has resulted in many Japanese diplomat trainees' enrollment.
While many Amherst students have political aspirations, very few graduate and immediately achieve diplomat status. Maehira will graduate this year, and Suzuki will graduate in 2006. Both will soon be Japanese diplomats.