Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump went as well as anyone in Tokyo or Washington could have hoped. But for all the good feelings on both sides, there are major challenges ahead. On the security front, neither Americans nor Japanese are fully committed to their alliance commitments. On economics, there’s more public buy-in but far less commitment from the United States. And outside the bilateral relationship, the second Trump administration’s policies are likely to affect the alliance in a host of negative ways.
The Ishiba-Trump joint statement largely restated past commitments, including the United States’ commitment to defend every inch of Japanese territory with the full U.S. arsenal, and included a laundry list of other joint Indo-Pacific priorities (including Taiwan). In their joint press conference, the two talked each other up, with Trump saying Ishiba had “qualities of greatness” and Ishiba calling Trump “powerful” and “sincere.” Certainly Ishiba outperformed public expectations in Japan (where two-thirds doubted he’d be able to build a good relationship with Trump) and is now reaping the benefits at home.
Ishiba’s successful visit builds on a binational relationship that both Americans and Japanese value. As a binational Yomiuri-Gallup survey found in December, both Americans and Japanese support a stronger Japanese defense capability, and both publics have similar views of the most likely threats in East Asia (China, Russia, and North Korea). And Americans link those two quite clearly: on a bipartisan basis, the American public wants to further strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance in order to help offset a rising China. This fits with Americans’ broader preference to take steps to contain the rise of China’s power, a trend which a majority of Americans see as a critical threat to the United States.
However, there are limits to what Americans support doing, even for such a favored ally. Should Beijing seize the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands – Japanese territory covered by the U.S. defense commitment to Japan – a majority of Americans oppose using U.S. forces to retake the islands. And while 7 in 10 Japanese expect the United States to come to the aid of Taiwan should China invade, neither the American public nor American policy experts are particularly enthusiastic about the idea.
As polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has found, Americans’ top priority in China-U.S. relations is avoiding a military conflict with China, and that emphasis carries over into how the public approaches crises involving U.S. allies and partners. While understandable – few publics are eager to send their militaries off to war against peer competitors – this reticence to back the United States’ closest ally in Asia reveals a major gap between alliance commitments and public expectations.
Nor are all the problems on the American side. Past survey research by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Japan Institute for International Affairs has found that the Japanese public opposes a wide range of roles for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in a crisis. Not only do majorities outright oppose the JSDF fighting alongside U.S. forces, but the only option that gets even a plurality of support (41 percent) is providing logistical support to U.S. troops off the battlefield. None of this conveys the image of a strong, publicly-supported military alliance.
Where there’s far stronger American public support is on the economic side of things. Americans view Japan as a fair trading partner and an economic and technological (and cultural) powerhouse. Matching those appraisals of Japanese technological and economic strength, a majority of Americans (65 percent) favor providing subsidies and tax credits to companies from allied and partner nations such as Japan under the CHIPS and Science Act.
But the economic relationship is precisely where the second Trump administration is most likely to be a lasting challenge to joint ambitions. Japan, along with other U.S. allies and partners, had bet on the Biden administration’s friend-shoring approach embedded within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That bet was already a risky one: Biden’s blatantly political block of Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel highlighted that even an ally-focused administration would prioritize narrow domestic audiences over broader objectives. That the block was a failure on all fronts does not seem to have helped anyone learn any lessons.
And now the Trump administration’s illegal freeze on funding for both IIJA and IRA projects threatens to remove the carrot from the equation, to be substituted by Trump’s preferred stick of tariffs.
Moreover, some of the major potential problems for Japan-U.S. economic relations are not specific to the bilateral relationship. The blanket tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum are one example: the move is not aimed at Japan, but nonetheless affects Japan and the Japan-U.S. relationship.
Another example is manufacturing, especially auto manufacturing. Japan is the largest single-country source for foreign direct investment in U.S. manufacturing. Japanese automakers have invested, cumulatively, $61.6 billion in their U.S.-based facilities which support over 2.2 million American jobs. But, as with most automakers in North America, their supply chains run across the entire North American trade area. Initial estimates of Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada suggested that Japanese automakers would take a hit of over $10 billion in profits as a result. The recurring potential for a North American trade war makes putting greater investments in that pot a risky bet – and we’re not even a month into the second Trump administration.
This would all be challenging enough. But the second Trump administration is also tearing the American state apart. The first casualty: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), unconstitutionally shuttered by Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” The move shows how quickly, and how far, the second Trump administration is willing to go and how much American power it is willing to burn for its own political ends.
Here, too, Japan is caught in the shockwave. While Japan clearly sees the relationship between foreign assistance and national security interests, taking on additional aid efforts would put an even greater burden on already-stretched finances. Yet failing to do so will leave the Indo-Pacific poorer and sicker – and potentially more interested in overtures from Beijing. And U.S. analysts are already pointing out cases in which China is stepping into the void left by USAID’s overnight shutdown.
I wish I could conclude with a set of reasonable policy recommendations for Tokyo and Washington to pursue. But these are unreasonable times. Neither Japanese nor Americans can have confidence that the Trump administration has their interests in mind when making policy. As a result, the Biden administration’s efforts to turn its hub-and-spoke alliance system into an “integrated, interconnected network” are about to get a very rough shock trial.
As the United States becomes a less reliable partner on a host of issues, Japan and other nations will have to work with one another rather than working through the United States. Although Ishiba’s successful visit may have warded off any immediate catastrophe, Japan still faces a very rough four years ahead.
