Japanese companies overwhelmingly think the nation's longest postwar expansion is peaking, with two-thirds expecting a tax hike imposed this month by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to hurt the economy, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
Almost all the firms in the monthly Reuters Corporate Survey said the world's third-biggest economy will level off or fall into recession in coming months, which would mark an end to the "Abenomics" expansion that the prime minister launched in late 2012.
And while most of the firms still don't want the Bank of Japan to increase its stimulus, that opposition has weakened sharply over the past quarter as the U.S-China trade war has clouded prospects for global growth and export-reliant Japan.