The US and Japan reached a trade deal, with Japan to invest $550 billion into the US economy, US President Donald Trump said late on Tuesday July 22.
“We just completed a massive Deal with Japan, perhaps the largest Deal ever made [sic],” Trump announced via a social media post.
The US will receive “90% of the Profits [sic],” he said. “Japan will open their Country to Trade including Cars and Trucks, Rice and certain other Agricultural Products, and other things.”
A tariff rate of 15% on Japan will be applied instead of the previous rate of 25%, Trump’s post said.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba supported the deal, saying “Japan’s tariff rate, which had been set to increase to 25% on reciprocal tariffs, was kept at 15%. This is the lowest figure to date among countries with trade surpluses with the US.”
“Japan is, for the first time ever, OPENING ITS [market] TO THE USA, even to cars, SUV’s, Trucks, -and everything else, even agriculture and RICE, which was always a complete NO, NO [sic],” Trump said in a Truth Social post Wednesday July 23. “The Open Market Japan may be as big a profit factor as the Tariffs themselves, but was only gotten because of the Tariff Power.”
Japanese chief negotiator Ryosei Akazawa told reporters on July 22 there would be no change to the Section 232 steel and aluminium tariffs yet.
Currently, the US imposes a 50% tariff rate on all imports of steel from Japan.
The ramifications on the steel industry are “too early to know,” Keybanc director of metals equity research Phil Gibbs told Fastmarkets.
“It sounds like a good deal for the US,” a steel buyer said, “but the devil is in the details.”
US buyers “would love to have slabs from [Japanese producer] JFE at 15% versus possible 50% from Brazil,” the buyer added.
The US automotive industry reacted negatively to the news. American Automotive Policy Council leader Matt Blunt told an independent news source, “any deal that charges a lower tariff for Japanese imports with virtually no US content than the tariff imposed on North American-built vehicles with high US content is a bad deal for US industry and US auto workers.”
Japan’s trade deficit with the US totaled $68.5 billion in 2024, according to data from the Office of the US Trade Representative.
In the first six months of 2025, the US imported 491,454.57 tonnes of steel from Japan, making Japan the sixth-largest exporter to the US, according to data from the US International Trade Agency. The US imported 218,068.72 tonnes from Japan in the three months after the revival of the Section 232 tariffs, down by 17.3% from the same period in 2024.
Deal comes after conclusion of US Steel-Nippon Steel Saga
The agreement between the two countries comes amid the finalization of of Japanese-owned Nippon Steel’s fraught acquisition of US Steel.
The deal concluded on June 18, after a long-winded saga that began during the Biden Administration.
Trump approved the merger with various caveats, like US Steel must maintain its name and headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The companies also had to sign a national security agreement and issue a “golden share” to the US government.
The merger will give the company a total global capacity of 86 million short tons, nearing Nippon’s goal of 100 million tons.
Robert England in Milton, Delaware, contributed to this story.
