Japan decided Saturday to continue to press the United States to review its extra tariffs on Japanese automobiles during bilateral talks aimed at scrapping the Trump administration’s tariff measures.
Washington has excluded automobiles and other key items from the scope of the talks. In response, Tokyo has insisted that it will make no concessions as it presses for a complete overhaul of each of the duties imposed Saturday, including those on auto parts.
“There is still a wide gulf between [Japan’s and the United States’] positions, and no common ground has emerged,” Ishiba told reporters after the meeting.
I read a theory that they want to devalue the USD to bolster exports, while holding access to the US market hostage in order to negotiate a new deal that keeps the USD as a reserve currency. TBH, if the US market was as important for the world as it used to be post WWII, perhaps they could pull that off without uncontrollable hemorrhage. Today though… that’s not as strong of a hand as they might think.
I’m not convinced we have any hand whatsoever. The world economy might be thrown into a bit of chaos, but more and more countries are starting to tell the US to go fuck itself. It’s not inconceivable to think of the US being completely irrelevant and ignored economically within the next decade.