“Protect Agriculture and Food Safety!”

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) negotiations in many Asian countries were accompanied by acrimonious protests by consumer and peasant organizations who feared a degradation of food safety standards, farmers’ livelihoods, an increase of multinational agri-food power and a decline of food security. Drawing on the examples of protest against the Korea–US FTA (KORUS) in South Korea, the Anti-Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) protests in Japan and the campaign against the US–Thailand FTA in Thailand, the chapter discusses two simultaneous yet seemingly contradictory processes: the transnationalisation of anti-PTA movements in Asia, on the one hand, and the increasing emphasis on domestic agriculture and food nationalism in many national campaigns, on the other hand.