Trump meets with Japanese officials about tariffs: Donald Trump in the 1980s: “If you go to Japan right now and try to sell something, forget about it. It’s almost impossible. They don’t have laws, they just make it impossible. They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs. And, hey, I have tremendous respect for the Japanese people. You can respect somebody that’s beating the hell out of you, but they are beating the hell out of this country.”
we bring this up not only to refer to Oprah and the way back machine and VCRs, but the Japanese are here, talking about possible trade negotiations and deals with the administration.
Yeah, and certainly something they haven’t wanted to talk about. Here, Trump is wrestling his way into negotiations that are happening between Secretary Luttnick and Secretary Bessent and the Japanese about their tariffs. And the Japanese are the first to really send an economic delegation over here to the White House to have these conversations.
And Trump, we know, pauses reciprocal tariffs. There was about a 24% reciprocal tariff that was going to go on Japanese goods. That’s not happening just as of yet, but there’s still that 10% blanket tariff and a 25% tariff on cars, automobile parts, steel, aluminum, things that certainly go into cars. And those are still in effect.
So, the Japanese are here today because clearly this is something that’s going to hit their economy. They’re trying to find a path forward while there is this pause on tariffs, but the White House certainly is not putting forth a lot of information exactly about when this meeting was, who on the Japanese side took part, what the readout was, what Trump said. We’re working on trying to find out that information. They haven’t been forthcoming.
But this comes as the stock market took another nosedive today. We heard from Fed Chair Powell, who said that the outlook on the economy, particularly for the car industry, is going to suffer for years and years to come. That is rattling markets globally.
And Olivia, to that point, the retail sales indicators today from the Commerce Department showed lots of retail sales. The explanation for that was, Americans said, wait a minute. Tariffs may be coming, let’s go buy now.
Right.
And lots of retailers, whether you’re selling cars or shirts or something else, pulled forward inventory. People bought stuff, but what does that mean going forward, nobody knows.
Nobody knows. And that inventory only lasts for so long. A lot of people went out and bought cars. A lot of locally owned dealerships said, we need to insulate ourselves. They don’t know what this is going to look like in 90 days, and on uncertain economic level feels very shaky, not only for car industry, but steel industry, pharmaceutical industry.
We’re still waiting for all of those tariffs that Trump promised on not only pharmaceuticals, but semiconductor chips. Those are also huge issues that is not only economic, but national security-wise, as well.
Source: raialkhalij + aljazeera