Japan<\/a>, including cars \u2013 Trump posted: \u201cPerhaps most importantly, Japan will open their country to trade including cars and trucks, rice and certain other agricultural products.\u201d<\/p>\nEarlier this month, the US president had complained: \u201cWe didn\u2019t give them one car in 10 years \u2013 they send out millions but they won\u2019t take any of ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US claims Japan uses non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to keep out American cars. Japan imported 16,707 American vehicles in 2024, according to the Japan Automobile Importers Association (JAIA).<\/p>\n
European brands, led by Mercedes-Benz and other German automakers, sold more than 250,000 into the same market, which overall is dominated by Japan\u2019s huge domestic auto industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t receive any requests from our member companies to address non-tariff barrier issues,\u201d said the JAIA\u2019s Sho Matsumoto. Takeshi Miyao, head of the Carnorama auto consultancy\u2019s Tokyo office, also says no such hurdles exist for US imports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are non-tariff barriers on rice [another sticking point in the trade negotiations], because the government feels it has to protect Japanese farmers, but not on vehicles,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Ford F-150 pickup trucks on the assembly line at the Dearborn truck plant in Michigan. Photograph: Rebecca Cook\/Reuters<\/p>\n
US manufacturers like GM and Ford simply don\u2019t focus on the Japanese market, according to Miyao.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t really do any marketing, and often don\u2019t even offer right-hand drive models. So the cars don\u2019t sell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Size is also a problem, Miyao notes. The Ford F-150 pickup is around six metres long and 2 metres high. That kind of vehicular behemoth is particularly ill suited to Japan\u2019s narrow roads and tight parking spaces.<\/p>\n
US cars also have longstanding image problems, says Takahisa Matsuyama, an instructor for chauffeurs and private hire drivers in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing back to the days when we first came across US cars like Cadillacs, they\u2019re seen as having terrible fuel efficiency and breaking down easily; that impression hasn\u2019t changed much,\u201d says Matsuyama.<\/p>\n
The 2025 car reliability rankings from Consumer Reports, a US non-profit organisation, bear this sentiment out.<\/p>\n
The top four marques were Subaru, Lexus, Toyota and Honda \u2013 all Japanese.<\/p>\n
The bottom four \u2013 Jeep, GMC, Cadillac and Rivian \u2013 were all American.<\/p>\n
Matsuyama points out that the biggest sellers in Japan have long been kei cars. Short for kei-jidosha (light vehicle), these compact cars and trucks are only allowed a tiny 660cc engine, and have topped sales rankings for decades \u2013 even as the government has gradually eroded the tax and insurance advantages they receive over regular vehicles.<\/p>\n
Small, economical kei cars predominate in Japan, topping sales rankings for decades. Photograph: Toru Yamanaka\/EPA<\/p>\n
The automotive antithesis of the giant pickup, the kei truck has actually gained a cult fanbase in the US, mostly through private imports.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s automakers will now face 15% tariffs on their exports to the US, up from 2.5% and the highest levy in decades. But investors have welcomed the figure as much less than the originally threatened 25% hike, to a total of 27.5%. The news sent the Nikkei 225 index up more than 4% this week, and shares in Japan\u2019s biggest carmakers surged even higher \u2013 Toyota, Honda and Nissan all gaining more than 10%.<\/p>\n
One of Trump\u2019s perennial complaints in his trade and tariff war has been that other companies \u201crip off\u201d the US by selling it more than they buy from it.<\/p>\n
In that vein, as part of the bilateral negotiations, Tokyo has agreed to encourage Japanese auto brands that also build cars in US factories to import some of them into Japan.<\/p>\n
That may at least put some US-built vehicles into the showrooms of Japan that motorists might actually buy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has declared that Japan is opening up its domestic market to US cars as part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-24762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}