At the start of July, days before the US was due to impose large tariffs on $150bn of imported Japanese goods, President Donald Trump vented his frustration with America’s biggest direct investor, its largest host of military forces and the biggest foreign holder of its debt.
“I could send [a letter] to Japan. ‘Dear Mr Japan, here’s the story . . . ’,” Trump told a television interviewer, after months of negotiations had failed to yield the quick, amicable and example-setting trade deal both sides initially thought possible.
For senior officials in Tokyo, the “Mr Japan” line jarred horribly with the “we love Japan” rhetoric with which Trump had welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to the White House just a few months earlier.
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