Last week, Japan sent its chief trade negotiator to Washington to speak with US leadership regarding a trade deal. Reports indicate the reason no deal has been reached is that Japan hasn’t gotten a firm, consistent answer on what the US wants.
Economic Revitalization Minister Ryosei Akazawa was in Washington DC until Friday last week but left without finalizing a deal with Trump’s trade teams. This morning, Fox Business Senior Correspondent Charles Gasparino reports that Japanese negotiators left frustrated and complaining about a lack of information.
“Japanese negotiators are complaining that the problem with the trade negotiations with the White House, what’s delaying concrete progress and a real deal, is the US keeps changing its ask in terms of exactly what it wants, said one financial CEO who speaks regularly to country officials,” Gasparino posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Maybe it’s a negotiating tactic. But the lack of publicly announced deal progress is depressing the dollar, spiking bond yields and leading to a flight to quality to gold and now Bitcoin.”
BREAKING: Japanese negotiators are complaining that the problem with the trade negotiations with the White House, what’s delaying concrete progress and a real deal, is that US keeps changing its ask in terms of exactly what it wants, said one financial CEO who speaks regularly to… — Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) April 21, 2025
Ambassador Chas Freeman, a now-retired career diplomat who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993 to 1994, weighed in on the issue earlier today via a live stream on YouTube.
“The Japanese have just been in Washington. Their experience apparently was they went to talk to the American leadership on this matter, and the American leadership said, ‘What are you offering?’ And the Japanese said, ‘Well, what is it that you want?’ And the Americans could not explain what they wanted,’” Freeman says.
“This is a cockamami approach to negotiation.”
The inability to come to a long-term agreement on trade is causing great uncertainty in the camera market. Japan-based companies are the leading producers of cameras and lenses. With no clear answer as to what import taxes its partners might face in the United States, Japanese manufacturers are having a very difficult time projecting the cost of equipment. PetaPixel has noted elongated wait times for pricing on products, with some — such as with Fujifilm’s latest Instax camera — coming over a week after announcement. This is unprecedented.
If Japan and the US don’t come to an agreement before the 90-day pause on tariffs expires, Trump may decide to apply the 24% tariff he threatened last month, which would cause rippling side-effects through the photo industry and likely stifle what has been resurgent over the previous four years.
Japan and the United States came to trade terms in 2019, under Trump’s first term as President, and signed a bilateral trade deal that cut tariffs on US farm goods, Japanese machine tools, and other products while also putting off the threat of higher US car duties, Reuters reports. After that deal was signed, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the time said that he received assurances from the Trump White House that no further tariffs would be applied to Japanese car imports.
But Trump went back on his own promise in 2025, adding a 25% tariff to all automotive imports into the United States — including those coming from Japan. As a result, Japan’s current Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba says that “Japan has grave concern over the consistency” with which the Trump administration is approaching trade deals.
Japan’s Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato plans to visit Washington later this week but that discussion is expected to revolve around currency rates. With Economic Revitalization Minister Akazawa already back in Japan after a fruitless visit last week, it is unclear what the next steps are for Japan which appears to be doing its best to come to some kind of a deal with Trump’s White House.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
Japan Can’t Get an Answer on What the US Wants From a Trade Deal: Report
