• Geopolitics
• Military
• China
• Japan

July 17, 2025, 12:09 PM View Comments ()

On July 7, U.S. President Donald Trump sent a letter to the Japanese government announcing a 25 percent tariff on all goods shipped to the United States beginning on Aug. 1. The reaction was swift. “The content is entirely unacceptable,” said Itsunori Onodera, a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). “To notify a key ally with nothing more than a single letter is extremely disrespectful, and I feel a strong sense of indignation.”

In a country where speaking one’s mind so directly is generally frowned on, this statement amounted to a shout of outrage. The sense of betrayal is palpable in Japan these days. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba thought that he had placated Trump’s more extreme demands by promising to invest an additional $1 trillion in the U.S. economy, eliciting praise from him at the time. The letter from Washington came as a correspondingly harsh surprise. A poll conducted in March and April found that 81 percent of Japanese felt “more uneasy than hopeful” about Trump’s second term in office; that number is now bound to be much higher.

Tokyo-watchers are now trying to figure out whether the perceived insult and broadside against the Japanese economy from the White House will hurt or help Ishiba in the upper house election on July 20. The vote comes at a time when popular discontent over inflation and rising unemployment is already spiking. And that’s not the only complicating factor: Tokyo is also struggling to formulate a response to rising Chinese military assertiveness in an already tense neighborhood. “Typhoon Trump is wreaking havoc with longstanding allies in Asia—Japan and South Korea—in ways that are undermining American power and influence in the region,” said Jeff Kingston, a professor at Temple University in Tokyo. “His erratic diplomacy is shredding trust in American reliability as an ally at a time when Tokyo is feeling vulnerable to Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions.”

In the third week of June, the Japanese watched with shock as China sent not one but two of its new aircraft carriers into the Western Pacific. The ships sailed through Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and one of them, the Liaoning, crossed for the first time the so-called second island chain, a crucial line of defense that connects Japan with the island of Guam, a major U.S. military strongpoint. The Chinese conducted drills involving hundreds of takeoffs and landings of helicopters and fighter planes, and one of the jets buzzed a Japanese surveillance aircraft, prompting an official protest from Tokyo.

On June 27, the cabinet authorized the Japanese military to shoot down Chinese drones that enter Japanese airspace—an uncharacteristically confrontational gesture that speaks volumes about Japan’s growing concern around Chinese incursions. Some analysts have warned that Beijing could opt to call Tokyo’s bluff by flying a drone over Japanese territory just to trigger a reaction. The cabinet decision came just three days after the Japanese miliary conducted its first missile test from within Japanese territory. The weapon in question was a land-based anti-ship missile—another clear signal to the Chinese.

Even under normal circumstances, Chinese saber-rattling would have provoked serious anxiety. But the circumstances right now are anything but normal. The political elite in Tokyo is harboring doubts about its alliance with Washington that go far beyond the uncertainty conjured up by earlier disagreements. At a moment when the Japanese want to see reassurance from their friends, they are instead being scolded as “spoiled” by the U.S. president for resisting his tariff demands.

According to the Financial Times, Japan canceled high-level security talks with the United States scheduled for July 1 after Washington asked Tokyo to “boost defence spending to 3.5 per cent [of GDP], higher than its earlier request of 3 per cent, according to three people familiar with the matter.” (The Japanese currently spend only around 1.6 percent, which stands in sharp contrast to the European defense buildup.) The Times said the request had been made by U.S. Defense Department policy chief Elbridge Colby, who had already set off alarm bells in Tokyo by launching a review of the Australia-U.K.-U.S. agreement to provide Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines. The Nikkei newspaper later reported that the Trump administration had even prodded Japan to raise its defense budget to a whopping 5 percent of GDP. Such U.S. demands are unlikely to go away, considering the extent to which Trump has been trumpeting Europe’s commitment to exactly that number as a “great victory” that only he could have achieved.

So how does Japan get out of this predicament? It’s probably too late for Ishiba to try appeasing Trump; the latest polls predict that his LDP will lose its majority in the parliament’s upper house, known as the House of Councillors. Since the LDP already lost control of the lower house in an earlier election, it’s quite possible to imagine the country passing into a prolonged crisis of governability—especially given the rise of several new right-wing parties that could destabilize the current and future governments.

It’s hard to imagine Ishiba or any new prime minister giving in to Trump’s two main demands on trade. He wants Tokyo to allow imports of U.S.-grown rice, which would be a blow to Japan’s politically well-connected domestic rice industry; allowing large-scale U.S. imports is widely regarded as career suicide for any prime minister. (Imagine Washington trying to allow sugar imports against the wishes of the U.S. sugar barons—and multiply that fracas by 10.) Trump also wants the Japanese to open their markets to U.S.-made cars. Again, many will resist this tooth and nail, given that the domestic car industry employs 1 out of 10 workers. Cars account for about one-third of all Japanese exports to the United States, so Trump’s tariffs will also cause serious economic pain. It’s no wonder that one opposition party leader has called on Japan to diversify its trade beyond the United States. But on this issue, too, there is only so much hedging Tokyo can manage.

And the Chinese military threat? The Japanese are clearly rattled, as a Defense Ministry white paper released just this week demonstrates. They are certainly trying to keep up and have been working hard on building ties with friendly countries such as Australia, India, the Philippines, and South Korea. “There is also increased investment in emerging technology, cyber-resilience, and space security—all domains less reliant on U.S. physical presence,” said Ken Jimbo, a professor at Keio University.

And Washington’s importunate demands notwithstanding, Tokyo has been steadily boosting its defense budget. In March, Tokyo implemented a major defense reform by standing up a Joint Operations Command, enabling unified command of all three military branches—designed specifically to coordinate operations in a possible Taiwan crisis. “We may be talking about 3 percent sooner or later,” said Kunihiko Miyake, the research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies. “We do need to spend more—ammunition, ammunition supplies, transport. We need to be able to fight longer. If we are going to be able to help Taiwan, we will need to ship supplies on sea.”

Will the Japanese-American relationship survive until then? The Japanese are trying to adapt to the threat from China, but their political and bureaucratic rigidity is clearly holding them back. The Americans probably aren’t wrong to prod them to move faster. On the trade front, meanwhile, William Pesek, a Japan-based commentator, has been urging Ishiba to “stand up to the bully” in Washington. Many Japanese will be reluctant to say the same thing quite so openly. But there can be no doubt that a lot of them are thinking it.