When United States President Donald Trump introduced his newest tariffs on steel and aluminium this week, he insisted there can be “no exemptions, no exceptions”.
Washington’s closest allies within the Asia-Pacific are hoping that they may be capable of change the mercurial US president’s thoughts.
Japan, South Korea and Australia, US treaty allies with export-reliant economies, have all confirmed that they’re searching for exemptions from Trump’s 25 % tariffs on metal and aluminium.
Trump has pledged to follow up on the measures in opposition to imported metal and aluminium with broader reciprocal tariffs, which may doubtlessly cowl a far wider vary of products, on nations that impose levies on US exports as quickly as Thursday.
“We are going to take obligatory measures, together with lobbying the US for an exemption, whereas carefully monitoring any doable impression on the Japanese economic system,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who met Trump in Washington final week, informed parliament on Wednesday.
Tokyo’s efforts to sway Trump are prone to embody commitments to extend US imports.
The US commerce deficit with Japan stood at about $70bn final yr, largely on account of exports by Japanese automakers akin to Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
Tokyo can also be prone to spotlight its significance as an ally in confronting China within the area and “its technical benefit, which is desperately wanted by the US to take a lead in new strategic industries”, stated Shigeto Nagai, the Asia head of Oxford Economics.
“Japan enjoys a big commerce surplus with the US for machineries, which provides incentive to the US to impose tariffs,” Nagai informed Al Jazeera.
“On the identical time, the technological benefit of Japanese machineries akin to semiconductor gear and supplies will make it tough to shortly discover substitutes.”
After their talks at the White House on Friday, Trump and Ishiba launched a joint assertion acknowledging the Republican’s agenda of boosting home trade, together with a pledge to strengthen power safety by “unleashing the US’ inexpensive and dependable power and pure assets”.
On the identical time, Ishiba impressed upon Trump that Japan has been the biggest international investor within the US for the previous 5 years working and introduced plans for $1 trillion in additional investments, together with in synthetic intelligence.
“My sense is that this [tariff exemptions] stays negotiable,” Ryota Abe, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Company (SMBC), informed Al Jazeera.
“The antagonistic impacts on the US economic system wouldn’t be small ought to the connection between the 2 critically be broken. And this could not be your best option even for the US.”
Though the contours of his second administration’s coverage priorities are nonetheless unfolding, Trump has taken his fame for being keen on a cope with him from his first time period.
Regardless of insisting that his tariffs would apply to all countries, Trump virtually instantly left the door open to an exception for Australia, saying he would give “nice consideration” to an exemption.
“Now we have a surplus with Australia, one of many few,” Trump stated.
Trump’s senior counsellor for commerce and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, poured chilly water on these hopes the next day, claiming that Australia was “killing” the US aluminium market.
Australia’s aluminium exports surged after Trump first entered workplace in 2016, peaking at about 269,000 tonnes in 2019.
Exports have fluctuated significantly since then, coming in at 83,000 tonnes in 2024, down from 210,000 the earlier yr.
“General, the second Trump administration is performing each extra ruthlessly and chaotically than the primary, so allies like Japan – and Australia, and NATO/EU [European Union] allies – will proceed to confront a extremely risky and tough diplomatic scenario, which would require extraordinarily dextrous management,” Craig Mark, an adjunct lecturer in economics at Hosei College in Tokyo, informed Al Jazeera.
Throughout his first time period, Trump didn’t undertake a uniform method to granting reprieves to pleasant nations and allies.
In 2018, his administration exempted Australia from metal and aluminium tariffs and granted South Korea a duty-free metal quota of as much as 2.63 million tonnes.
However his administration didn’t prolong such aid to Japan.
The administration of former US President Joe Biden eased the tariffs on Japanese metal in 2022, agreeing to permit 1.25 million metric tonnes of metal to enter the US every year duty-free whereas protecting tariffs on aluminium in place.
“The expertise of the primary Trump administration exhibits how Japan may discover itself the goal of US tariffs but once more, regardless of all its diplomatic efforts,” stated Mark, the Hosei College professor, stating that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe went to “nice lengths to construct an in depth private relationship with Trump”.
Whereas Trump has a “way more expansive view of his remit”, in contrast along with his first time period, and views tariffs as a “genuinely invaluable device that can be utilized to resolve a myriad of issues”, the overriding function of his administration is uncertainty, stated Deborah Elms, head of commerce coverage on the Hinrich Basis in Singapore.
Elms stated she was not sure Trump himself would be capable of present solutions about his coverage route or targets, “or if he did so, that his solutions now can be the identical as what he may say in one other hour or day or week”.
“As he’s the one driving commerce coverage – for the second, at the very least – this lack of readability issues,” Elms informed Al Jazeera.
