America's Talking - Trump Announces Trade Deal With Japan, 15% Tariff on Japanese Imports

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had reached a framework for a trade deal with Japan that will include a 15% tariff on imports from the island nation. Trump outlined the broad terms of the deal in a post on Truth Social, as he has for other trade pacts. Trump said imports from Japan will face a 15% tariff, while U.S. exports to Japan will be tariff-free. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0ab13b6c-551f-4ecf-bf44-184e3b514706.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAelib, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. As President Donald Trump continues to negotiate a trade deal with the European Union, he said this week that he reached a deal with Japan and the Philippines. The agreement with Japan is especially significant as the two-allied nations traded goods totaling an estimated $228 billion in 2024. Joining me to discuss this is the center square tariff guru Brett Rowland. Brett, let's start with the details of the Japan agreement.

And we'll discuss other developments in a bit. What are those details? So we don't have a ton of details yet. Just as with some of the other trade deals that Trump has announced, most of them are announced on truth, social. There's not a ton of details. So we kind of go with just what he puts out. Sometimes the White House has been putting out more detailed information later.

We haven't seen that. We've only seen that for the deal with the UK. and the deal with Indonesia so far. So the Japan deal, we're just operating off basically a framework or some broad guide rails. So essentially, Japan will pay a 15% or imported goods from Japan will face a 15% tariff. U.S. exports to Japan will be tariff-free, which is a big win. Now, there's another part to this deal that has been somewhat overlooked, but Trump also announced that Japan would invest 550,000, billion dollars in the U.S.

Now, what form that investment takes has yet to be seen? Also, Trump has saying that 90% of the profits from those investments would go to U.S. taxpayers and that the rest would, the other 10% would go back to Japan. But just how those would be structured,

it remains to be seen. That's one of the big question marks on this deal. But Trump is very proud of it. It is certainly one of the biggest trade deals that he's reached. And it's a big trade deal with a country that has a big U.S. trade deficit. So the deal that Trump reached earlier with the United Kingdom, United Kingdom is essentially, has a flat trade balance with the U.S. Sometimes the U.S. has more trade. Sometimes the U.K. has more trade. So that one was

fairly easy. But the Japan one was more difficult and the biggest one he's reached so far. So it's certainly an accomplishment for him. But again, these are just framework deals. Right. So the rest of what happens will remain to be seen. Regarding the details that we know, it does seem like this is a win for President Trump. But U.S. automakers do have some concerns about the Japan deal because tariffs on imports from the island nation are lower than tariffs on vehicles from Canada and Mexico. Tell us about those concerns. Yeah.

So this is actually really interesting. And this came up too during the UK deal that Trump reached. So, Japan is home to Toyota. Toyota's the top selling brand in the U.S. I don't know what kind of the car you're driving this lately, Dan, but I'm still driving a 2005 Toyota Prius. I'll get a new one when the wheels all off, but what are you driving, Dan? I do drive an American-made car, Chrysler 300, 2016 Chrysler,

but my wife owns a Honda CRV, so we're sort of a mixed family. Honda is another popular foreign brand in the U.S. But so, you know, we'll have to see in Honda also based in Japan. But so we'll have to see where this goes. But U.S. automakers are not pleased with this so far. So essentially what the U.S. automakers are saying is that our economies and our auto industries is so closely connected with that with the auto industry in Mexico. and Canada that you're essentially going to charge us higher tariffs than you're going to charge Japan vehicles. And with Toyota being the Thai brand in the U.S., they're not pleased.

So essentially, and this has come up a couple of times before, but recently the mayor of Windsor, Canada, which is a major auto hub that's been connected with Detroit for 100 years, he said essentially the two the two cities are inextricably linked. Like you can't undo the connections that have been made. And sometimes vehicles cross the border multiple times between U.S., Mexico and Canada before they go on sales. So the U.S. automakers are not pleased with this development. And I think that the concern is that if this goes forward with other countries, that they're worried. that their bottom line could get hurt on this.

Interesting. Brett, briefly tell us about the deal that was struck also this week with the Philippines. Oh, that's a good point. So we got some more details about that. So this is the first for the, you know,

these Philippines and Indonesia were the other two tradebacks that were announced. Now, these are smaller training partners, but they still do quite a bit of business with the U.S., billions of dollars in trade. So for the Philippines, Trump is going to have a 19% tariff on imports from that country. Same with Indonesia. He said that both countries have promised to open up their markets to U.S. goods.

He said the same thing about Japan, too. Now, we don't know exactly what that looks like because Howard Lutnik came out later and said, Japan was never going to open its markets the way that Donald Trump wanted them to. And that's why that $550 billion payment came out. So just what exactly open markets means. here is is one of those things that that hasn't been fully elucidated by the White House yet. So we'll have to see, but there's quite a bit of trade with those two countries, 19% tariffs on both. But the lowest we've seen, you know, is the 10% for the UK and then 15% for Japan.

So what the bottom line is going forward, I think is going to be real interesting. it doesn't sound like Trump wants to go anywhere near, he wants to keep everything at least at the baseline of 10%. But other than that, we could see higher rates elsewhere. And it'll depend on how the rest of these deals fall into shape. But Trump has made significant progress this week, at least two big deals and more details on a third.

So finally we're seeing what I would say would be pretty quick progress. Perhaps the biggest one that's still outstanding is a trade deal with the European Union. There have been reports that the president is getting close to announcing a deal on that. We don't know yet. But thank you for joining us today, Brett. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.