WASHINGTON -- When the White House began negotiations after President Donald Trump announced country-by-country "reciprocal" tariffs, Japan was first in line. Japanese trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa met with Trump in the Oval Office in mid-April, and was photographed donning a red "Make America Great Again" hat, signed by the president, signaling optimism.
On Monday morning, it was a completely different picture. Japan was the first to receive a letter from Trump declaring the relationship "far from Reciprocal" and announcing a unilateral 25% tariff on all Japanese goods exports to the U.S.
The tone of the letter has stunned Japanese officials, who had hoped their close ties with Washington would earn them special treatment.
As recently as July 2, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba had expressed confidence that Japan would be treated differently. "Japan is the world's largest investor in the U.S. and creates the largest number of jobs," Ishiba said during a debate at the Japan Press Club ahead of the July 20 upper house elections. "We are in a different situation from other countries."
But analysts say Tokyo has to adapt to new realities.
"Japan is holding on to a set of assumptions about alliances, cost-benefit calculations and grand strategy that no longer fully apply," Lizzi Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, told Nikkei Asia.
"For decades, Japan's strategic posture was built on the idea that its role as America's most reliable ally in Asia, along with its massive foreign-direct-investment footprint in the U.S. and its centrality to the China-Taiwan question, would protect it from blunt trade pressure."
But, she continued, "this moment shows that those assumptions are being tested in real time. The old political and economic logic, where security contributions and political alignment bought you economic indulgence, seems to carry much less weight nowadays."
On China, Tokyo may have misjudged the Trump administration's priorities.
"When it comes to China, President Trump is overwhelmingly focused on trade and the trade deficit," said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a partner at The Asia Group and former National Security Council senior director for East Asia and Oceania. "He is very determined to negotiate directly with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and to get a trade deal."
While there may be individual officials in the Trump administration who have hawkish views on China, "if the president is extremely focused on a trade negotiation and leader-level diplomacy with Xi Jinping for the sake of reducing the trade deficit, then the space that other voices and other approaches have to operate is significantly reduced," Rapp-Hooper said.
Mireya Solis, the Philip Knight chair in Japan Studies at the Brookings Institution, said, "What is being tested is whether the U.S.-Japan 'special relationship' holds," comparing ties to those of the U.S. and the U.K., long considered the closest of America's allies.
"Ishiba insisted that Japan makes extraordinary contributions to the American economy as a leading investor, as an indispensable partner on security in the Indo-Pacific, and therefore that should be reflected in the terms of negotiations. That's not what President Trump has been signaling," she said.
Instead of receiving special treatment, Japan was grouped together with 13 other countries, all notified with identical language.
Yuki Tatsumi, director of the Japan program at the Stimson Center, said the Trump administration may have concluded that Ishiba is indecisive and has little incentive to protect him ahead of the elections.
"The U.S. side may be thinking that whatever the outcome of the upper house elections is, no strong leadership is likely to emerge in Japan," she said.
Symbolically, as ties with the U.S. sour, China's Vice Premier He Lifeng will embark on a trip to Japan, where he will visit the Osaka Expo 2025.
From Saturday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit China, making stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, taking along a trade delegation of CEOs.
Matthew Goodman, director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "China is going to try to take advantage of this potential rift [between the U.S. and its allies]. No question about that."
But The Asia Group's Rapp-Hooper said allies are quite pragmatic and will not overreact.
"The main takeaway here is that the Trump administration was not able to pin down as many deals with key allies as it had hoped to by the July 9 deadline and has now created an extension period" until Aug. 1 to further negotiate.
Sending out the letters was a way to "move the goalposts," and the announcement of the tariff rate could help countries go over the finish line in negotiations, she said.
