The Cabinet enacted economic reforms to reduce the burden of Japan's debt and the costs inflicted by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear accident.

Noda seek to increase the tax to gain more revenue to pay off Japan's debt and the cost of the recovery of the triple disaster.

While the consumption tax increase bill received wide support in the Diet, including from the LDP opposition, a major faction in the DPJ led by Ichirō Ozawa was strongly opposed to the policy.

Following Fukushima radiation, Noda's government also oversaw further closedown of Japan's nuclear power plants, continuing his predecessor's policy.

[2] An exception to this was the Ōi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui which was reopened in July 2012 to mitigate the damage inflicted to the plant-dependent local economy.