A shift must, and will take place, but sadly I’m afraid, we ain’t seen the worst of it yet.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was certainly busy promoting free trade last month. Following up on free trade agreements struck with Thailand and Brunei earlier this year, Mr. Abe flew to Jakarta and signed still another FTA with Indonesia on Aug. 20. Then he flew to New Delhi two days later, proclaiming that India would be the next special Japanese trading partner to participate in “an arc of freedom and prosperity” in a “broader Asia” that would include America and Australia (but not China). The intrepid traveler from Tokyo wrapped up his trip on Friday, Aug. 24, by jetting to Kuala Lumpur, where he praised the mutual benefits of bilateral economic cooperation thanks to a Japanese-Malaysian FTA that was signed in 2005. At week’s end, free traders had cause to celebrate.

Well, hardly. This wasn’t free trade — but the latest signs of the most important Japanese policy shift on international economics since the end of World War II. For more than half a century, Japan, an original signatory to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, has strongly endorsed multilateral trade liberalization through the GATT and its successor international trade rules-making body in Geneva, the World Trade Organization. The core principle of the GATT and the WTO is treating all trading partners equally.

By contrast, today’s so-called free trade agreements are about treating different trading partners differently. While they lower some trade barriers for those included in the deals, the driving idea behind preferential trade is to put outsiders at a competitive disadvantage. Preferential trade is at odds with trade liberalization.

The FTA between Japan and Indonesia runs to 938 pages containing rules of origin, exclusions for politically sensitive products, and protectionist specifications for 40% of local content on “sensitive” — read, politically sensitive — products. There are special rules and various product exclusions for vegetables, sugar, various dairy products, fruits, tobacco and much else. Japan won’t cut tariffs for any kind of pineapples from Malaysia, Brunei or Singapore, but will gradually reduce duties for some fresh and dried pineapples from Thailand and the Philippines. But while tariffs on Thai dried pineapples are at 6% in the first year, and will be phased out entirely in six years, the Philippines’ dried pineapples will be taxed at 7.2% at first, and won’t be duty free until year 11.

This is special-interest politics, not sound economics. The Japanese boast that their FTAs give them preferential access to oil from Brunei, natural gas from Indonesia, and export platforms for Japanese manufacturers in smaller Asian economies. To readers of a certain age, this has a familiar ring.

While it’s premature to hit the panic button, it’s sure time to sound the alarms. It’s simply wrong for the world’s leading economies to act as if they want Fortresses Asia, Europe and America.

It’s truly a cause for concern that while the “developed” nations of the world are voraciously consuming resources that the developing nations sorely need to get on their feet.

It’s a shameful thing that soon the battle for foreign source biofuels will place grains for food and grains to fuel the way of life in the developed nations in competition and under these “protective” agreements.

Surely a shift in our thinking must take place. We are ONE.