JJapan

Trump seeks to slash Japan trade deficit through LNG exports and tariffs

  • February 7, 2025

Trump seeks to slash Japan trade deficit through LNG exports and tariffs

by NikkeiAsia

12 comments

  1. Hi all! This is Emma from Nikkei Asia’s audience engagement team.

    Here’s an excerpt from our report about U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba meeting today.

    *U.S. President Donald Trump told Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba that he is looking to end America’s trade deficit with its key ally and that it can be done “very quickly” through the expansion of energy exports.*

    *Trump greeted Ishiba at the entrance of the White House West Wing on Friday morning, telling reporters, “I love Japan.” They had a 33-minute meeting in the Oval Office, followed by a working lunch that lasted an hour and 15 minutes. They closed with a joint news conference that lasted 37 minutes.*

    *”Japan will soon begin importing historic new shipments of clean American liquefied natural gas in record numbers,” Trump said at the news conference.*

    *He said the two sides are discussing a joint venture to build a pipline that runs through the state of Alaska, connecting the gas rich region in the north to the ports in the south. He called Alaska “the closest point of major oil and gas to Japan by far, and less than half the distance of any other location.”*

    *Ishiba said the Biden administration’s reluctance to export LNG was “a really unfortunate thing,” and welcomed Trump’s enthusiasm to export to Japan.*

    *”We are interested in importing not just LNG, but also bioethanol, ammonia and other resources at a stable price, a reasonable price,” the Japanese leader said.*

    *But Trump also noted that “chronic” trade deficits harm the U.S. economy and that he will not tolerate the deficit with Japan to stay as it is.*

    *”As we deepen our economic relationship, I made clear that the United States will be conducting trade with all countries based on the principle of fairness and reciprocity,” Trump said.*

  5. Ugh, Japan too? Please stop Trump

    Edit: their comment is gone now; someone replied telling me to learn to read, but the article is paywalled so I couldn’t read it. Even archive ph did not allow me to view the article in full. Are there no tariffs? Is it misleading? I scored a 33 on ACT Reading in high school, so the reply was kind of funny, ngl.

  7. well… i’m not surprised, he is just going to every country saying “trade deficit!” i figured it’d be our turn at some point. :/

  8. Sad to see that Japan is bending the knee to this person and the US in general. After the Plaza accords and the nukes dropped on two cities. Is it the fear of getting tariffed by the orange man or what is it? The last prime minister of Japan was very pro-US afaik and the Japanese ousted him. Now this guy seems to be the same.

  9. Ishiba: I am unable to respond to a theoretical question that’s the official answer that we have.

  10. Sounds like Japan is gonna ramp up nuclear power haha…

    And boo on tariffs on Japanese goods…

  11. The stable genius has only bankrupted six companies, so he is clearly an expert on everything. All the world’s problems will soon be solved!!

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