President Donald Trump is threatening to impose higher tariffs on Japanese exports to the United States over what he claims is the country’s unwillingness to buy American-grown rice.
“They won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage. In other words, we’ll just be sending them a letter, and we love having them as a Trading Partner for many years to come,” Trump said in aposton Truth Social.
Trump’s claim that Japan “won’t take” rice from the US isn’t true. The country bought $298 million worth of rice from the US last year, according to US Census Bureau trade data. Between January and April of this year, Japan bought $114 million worth of rice.
However, it’s unclear if Japanese officials involved in ongoing trade negotiations between the two countries have said they will stop buying rice from the US in the future. Representatives from Japan’s embassy in the US did not immediately respond to CNN.
Trump has said recently that his administration plans to send some foreign countries letters advising them of what their new tariff rates could be, following the pause of his April “reciprocal” tariffs on US trading partners.
Trump’s Truth Social message comes with just days to go until the July 9 deadline when Trump’s 90-day pause on those “reciprocal” tariffs expires. It’s unclear what will happen to tariff rates for the dozens of impacted countries.
Before Trump announced the pause, Japanese exports were briefly subjected to a minimum tariff rate of 24%. Since the pause went in effect, they’ve been subject to the universal 10% rate.
This is a developing story and will be updated.