On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced that he will skip attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands this week. He also refrained from either supporting or condemning Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities over the weekend.
These are just the latest signals of dissonance in recent weeks. When Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya visits Washington later this month for a gathering of the Quad foreign ministers -- along with counterparts from India and Australia -- the U.S. and Japan will not hold a widely expected two-plus-two meeting of foreign and defense ministers.
The discord stems from the abrupt and inconsistent messages by the Trump administration. A U.S. official told Nikkei Asia in late May that an interagency agreement was reached on the American side to request that Japan increase its defense spending to 3% of gross domestic product as part of the ongoing trade negotiations to reduce tariffs.
But a new figure of "3.5%" began to circulate in Washington after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Australian counterpart Richard Marles on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on May 30.
"Secretary Hegseth conveyed that Australia should increase its defense spending to 3.5% of its GDP as soon as possible," a Pentagon readout released two days after the meeting noted.
U.S. officials began to talk of 3.5% being the new "flat ask" for Asian allies, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby.
Last week, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell made that official by issuing a statement saying European allies are setting the new "global standard" for America's alliances at 5% of GDP. This came in reference to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte's recently announced spending target of 3.5% for military procurement and 1.5% on related infrastructure.
A Japanese official told Nikkei that Tokyo is open to discussing increased defense spending, but that the process seems unorganized. Officials said Washington has not formally conveyed any figure to Japan. Japanese officials have had difficulty accessing Colby directly.
Another Japanese official said that if Japan were to increase defense spending -- which is now 1.8% of GDP and scheduled to reach 2% by fiscal 2027 -- it would be a sovereign decision by Tokyo and need to be accompanied by reasoning that can be presented to Japanese public.
The dissonance between the allies could stem from a difference in urgency. Colby is working under the assumption that the U.S. and its allies need to be prepared for a Taiwan crisis in 2027, the year Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly ordered the People's Liberation Army to be ready for an operation to seize the island by force.
Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, said the Trump administration is being "quite inconsistent" in its approach to Japan and that the uncertainty will be a challenge for the alliance.
"The cancellation of Ishiba's visit for the NATO meeting and of the two-plus-two, put together, is definitely a concerning set of signals," he said. "It suggests to me that Tokyo wants to wait before the upper house election [on July 20], rather than engaging directly with the Trump administration."