The deal will reportedly see the US levy 15% tariff on goods imported from Japan. Donald Trump also said the US would increase exports of rice and vehicles to the East Asian nation.
The deal will reportedly see the US levy 15% tariff on goods imported from Japan. Donald Trump also said the US would increase exports of rice and vehicles to the East Asian nation.
Yeah, good luck with that. No one’s gonna buy our rice or shitty, gas-guzzling cars over there because of this trade war shit, so this is basically just Trump announcing a 15% tax on consumers who want to buy stuff from Japan.
They will probably buy our rice
Rice situation in Japan is pretty dire atm and probably will stay that way through 2026. It’s a staple crop and prices have gone up substantially due to the shortages
We already buy your rice to give away as aid to other countries or emergency stock. No consumer will buy it though.
Tell that to yoshinoya, who has been mixing California rice into their rice for the past year with some locations using entirely American rice, or Matsuya, who have switched to American rice at many locations due to cost. Lawson is also starting to prototype bentos with rice blends. Even if the consumer takes a nationalist approach the invisible hand of capitalism will reject that for profit
And with that there’s data to suggest the consumer doesn’t reject imported rice. Aeon sold the 80/20 blend with US rice and that proved popular enough that they are now selling 4kg bags of 100% california rice due to consumer demand. The 80/20 bags were 10% cheaper, the 100% is likely far more
It is a dangerous game. This is how walmart destroyed American small business. Everyone has ideals and principles until a massive vendor with huge advantage shows up and undercuts everyone in town by 10-30%. Doesn’t matter if the product is inferior. People don’t have money
I stand corrected!
I, however will not buy US rice from a shitty experience I had with it, and the fact that I’d rather not support a shithole run by a president who wants to annex Canada.
Understandable
I use us rice because I live here and in terms of global warming unless there is a shortage and I have no other option it makes the most sense to use California rice
That said Japanese rice is more aromatic and has lower arsenic content so in a perfect world I would use that. However, I do not want to both contribute to the emissions of shipping rice across the globe when there is rice that is good enough plus I don’t want to contribute to taking Japanese rice away from Japan. It appears that a big contributor to the rice shortage is again capitalistic scumbaggery - both in terms of middlemen scalping with shortages occurring and the export market valuing Japanese rice as “premium”. I don’t want to contribute to that just like I won’t buy a marked up concert ticket or game console.
Fair point. But our cars? Nah.
Agree, and using the rice situation as leverage is shitty tbh. It’s a crisis and while Japan is a developed nation with a relatively good standard of living for the most part it’s also one with extremely stagnant wages and economic growth, fairly significant wealth inequality, etc.
many Japanese are struggling to get by more than Americans. Though it’s hard to directly compare. The average salary in Japan in far lower than in America (~30k vs ~39k) and wages for equivalent positions are much lower (like a computer programmer who gets paid $80k for an American company might get $50-60k from a Japanese company), but the cost of living is much lower in many ways, rent costs are substantially lower (even a Tokyo apartment is like $500usd/month unless you want something crazy extravagant), robust public transit network making car ownership truly optional, healthcare system that is not ideal but has much more managed costs than the us, etc
That’s probably in part why sanseitō (think japanese maga: anti immigration (in a country that barely allows it), super nationalist (in a country that’s already crazy nationalist), anti vaccination, etc) is seriously picking up steam and just picked up several seats in the upper house, going from 1 seat to 14 at the expense of the LDP and communist party who lost seats. They ran on rhetoric similar to trump, a “silent invasion” of immigrants is “taking over Japan”. It captured their youth, who are frustrated by a lack of meaningful jobs and the reality of an economy that has been stagnant for many decades at this point (arguably caused by boomer policy and refusal to break from tradition) but instead of looking inward at what could’ve been done wrong domestically they are looking for a boogeyman to easily shift blame to. Sound familiar?
The right wing shift is not limited to America unfortunately. AfD, sanseitō, national rally, Lega, Orban and bolsonaro, etc. many of these are picking up quite a bit of steam
A lot of our cars won’t fit on Japanese roads and inner cities, however, the US already exports quite a bit of rice to Japan. I think the most popular rice used in Sushi is grown in California. That being said, if the market exists, then American automakers will attempt to make model(s) that appeals to Japanese sensibilities. This will probably just result in Toyota manufacturing marginally more in the US only to export the vehicles back to Japan.
Japan govt has already asked their motor US subsidiaries to export their goods back to Japan. Its much more easier for them to make Jp specific modification compared to US-origin manufacturers.
I hadn’t seen this but I’ll look into it. Small dominos.
FYI, that was reported in Jp news flash and the source is internal govt, it maybe not credible enough to publish globaly