Divorced complaints of reality
Once seen through a lens from the 80s as a protectionist nation, Japan is now a free trade champion, saving the transpacific partnership when Trump abandoned it during his first mandate, and helping to direct the regional complete economic partnership which covers trade in a large part of Asia.
But can Akazawa persuade the American team to see reality? Trump's complaints have been largely divided from reality, from his discourse on auto sales obstacles to suggestions that he takes an import of 700% on rice, a figure that ministers have ridiculed as “incomprehensible”.
This thought is not limited to the current president. The successive American administrations, on both sides of the aisle, found things in Japan they don't like. In the posthumous memories of the late Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister details how in 2014, then President Barack Obama made roughly the same argument as Trump.
Dinner at the famous sushi joined Sukiyabashi Jiro, Obama told Abe: “I haven't seen a single American car on my way here. You have to do something about it.”
The Prime Minister explained that there was no price on American cars, but Obama protested, citing supposed “non -tariff barriers”. It may not be difficult to see where this line comes from, with the Hudson Institute noting that cars in Japan succeed in the United States, they represent more than three-quarters of the trade deficit.
But Abe explained that American manufacturers were simply making no effort to sell in his country, or not changing the steering wheel position to match the Japanese roads, or even by advertising on television as European manufacturers. Obama “be upset fairly quickly after that,” Abe wrote.
