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 rice from here.
“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 a post on Truth Social.
The president has said recently that his administration will soon send some foreign countries letters telling them what their new tariff rates could be. Trump’s post implies Japan could be among the trading partners subjected to higher rates.
Trump’s Truth Social message comes just over a week ahead of the July 9 deadline when Trump’s 90-day pause on “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.
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