Says of the Japan trade talks: “Much will wait until after their July elections.”
It’s Trade Tuesday! Everybody gather round, and smoke ’em if you got ’em.
President Trump just spent the Memorial Day weekend in Tokyo on a state visit to Japan. He met the new emperor. He got primo seats at a sumo tournament. At a press conference near the end the visit, Trump disagreed with his hosts and his own national security adviser about the threat of North Korean missile activity, didn’t really budge on potential auto tariffs, and talked some smack about a political rival back in the States. He managed to do some of those things at the same time!
Pres. Trump says he disagrees with some of his advisers over whether North Korea's short range missile tests violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, but that he agrees with Kim Jong Un's attack on former Vice Pres. Joe Biden. https://t.co/6geXLsMBXl pic.twitter.com/RT3ViDV5Z7
— ABC News (@ABC) May 27, 2019
How deft! This dude will seriously keep you guessing in a press conference.
Observers say the Shinzo Abe government has tried to appeal to Trump since shortly after he won election in 2016, with Prime Minister Abe personally buddying up to him. Abe was the first foreign head of state to visit him in the weeks after Trump’s victory. And they just made Trump the first foreign head of state to meet the emperor, and that didn’t go unnoticed! And they always golf, the president likes to golf. And it looks like the president really enjoyed that sumo tournament, too.
Donald Trump presents trophy at Tokyo sumo wrestling event https://t.co/lk2MZdPdaB pic.twitter.com/RM4MGoXpIV
— New York Post (@nypost) May 26, 2019
It’s unclear if it’s really getting them anywhere, particularly on trade. And The Japanese government had waited for the Trump administration to potentially rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the president had left shortly after taking office, but it then agreed to bilateral trade negotiations after the administration raised steel and aluminum tariffs and began pondering similar tariffs on all auto imports.
And, despite being huge manufacturers in the United States, Japan still exports a lot of cars to here. A tariff increase on autos would be significant.
The administration recently put off its tariff decision for a few months, though they might catch some heat from the World Trade Organization. And the bilateral U.S.-Japan negotiations, in which the Trump administration is reportedly insisting on including a currency rule, are also on hold until after Japan holds elections this summer; so says the president’s Twitter account.
But while the president is tweeting about agriculture exports, Wall Street expects Japan’s GDP would take a significant hit if their auto exports faced American tariffs. Those tariffs are a potentially huge deal in these negotiations, and the administration’s decision on whether to raise them will be one to watch for.
Anyway, President Trump will be back in Japan in approximately one month for a G20 meeting. He may meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping there; he may not. They’d probably have a few things to talk about!
As the president likes to say: “We’ll see what happens!”