US reaches deal with Japan, tariff cut

The United States, riding a tariff wave launched by President Donald Trump, has concluded a trade agreement with Japan, the fourth largest economy in the world, in Washington on Tuesday.

According to the agreement, the US will impose 15 per cent tariff on all goods imported from Japan. This is a much lower rate than the 25 per cent that Trump had threatened Japan with from August 1. Even as the deadline hovered over the talks, the two sides managed to arrive at an agreement much before the dreaded date.

Trump had declared on his Truth Social, his personal portal, “This Deal will create Hundreds and Thousands of Jobs – There has never been anything like it. This is a very exciting time for the United States of America, and especially for the fact that we will continue to always have a great relationship with the Country of Japan.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said, “Since February, we have been negotiating with our national interests at stake. Both sides have engaged in all-out, close-to-the-edge negotiations over automobiles and other products. I believe this outcome reflects those efforts.”

The trade agreement reflects interesting details. Though it appears that the United States has gained hugely going by the headline figures – Japan will have to invest $550 billion in the United States, open its agricultural sector to American rice – the impact on the Japanese GDP would be a mere 0.55 per cent. Even if the tariff rate had remained at the apparently punitive 25 per cent, the impact on Japanese GDP would have been 0.85 per cent. The US was running a trade deficit of $69.4 billion. And Japan will channel the investments in the US from state-backed institutions like Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) or through guaranteed loans. The Japanese investments are to be made in semi-conductors, pharmaceuticals, steel, shipbuilding, critical minerals, aviation, energy, automobiles, AI and quantum technology.

The sensitive area for Japan is the import of rice. Japan consumes seven million tonnes of rice every year. It maintains a tariff-free quota of 770,000 tonnes. And it will increase the ratio of US rice imports within this range. It is said that there is room for rice imports outside the free tariff quota, with the proviso of 341 yen ($.2.33) per kilogramme of rice.

Prime Minister Ishiba referring to the opening of rice imports from the US, said, “You can think of it as increasing the proportion of rice procured from the United States, under the minimum access arrangement, but this agreement does not include any provisions that would sacrifice agriculture.”

Both sides have bargained hard, and each side has claimed victory. The Japanese believe that that they have succeeded in bringing down the reciprocal tariff rate from 25 per cent to 15 per cent, a clear 10 per cent reduction. The US believes that it has managed to force Japan to necessarily invest in the US – according to the deal $550 billion – and that 90 per cent of the profits made from the investments will remain in the United States, and that it has succeeded in prising open the protected agricultural market, especially with regard to rice.

It is expected that the US-Japan trade deal will serve as a template for the trade agreements with the European Union (EU) and China. The expectation is that the US will settle for a 15 per cent tariff with these two as well. The US is willing to be reasonably generous with big trade partners like Japan, EU, and China. But with smaller countries and economies like the Philippines and Indonesia it is playing tough. In the deal with the Philippines and Indonesia, the US has brought down the tariff regime from 20 per cent to 19 per cent. The trade balance of the US with these two countries is much lower, $17.9 billion with Indonesia and $4.9 billion with the Philippines.