Ishiba's weakened mandate complicates US trade and defense plans: analysts
Japan's opposition parties have not given strong alternatives for how to handle Trump
WASHINGTON -- The U.S.-Japan alliance has entered a period of uncertainty, American think tank analysts say, after Sunday's upper house Diet election resulted in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party having lost its majority in both legislative chambers for the first time since its founding in 1955.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, after losing two consecutive national elections, faces heavy criticism from LDP lawmakers over his decision to continue as Japan's leader. Complicating the matter further is that opposition parties have not offered clear strategies for dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump.
"None of the opposition parties put forward a clear plan for dealing with Trump's tariff negotiation," said Kristi Govella, the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The public wants to see Japan's national interests protected, but it seems that all countries are having a difficult time negotiating with Trump."
Tobias Harris, the founder of political risk advisory Japan Foresight, said if Ishiba could not win trade concessions from the U.S. before the election, Washington is "not going to be more inclined to help him at this point." The Trump administration knows that Ishiba is politically weak and will hold the line in the trade talks, Harris said.
"And then the question becomes: How long does Ishiba hold on?" he said.
Some speculate that negotiations might have gone differently under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a close ally of Trump. But Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), cautioned against that assumption.
"We can speculate that, had it been Abe, maybe Trump would have been less harsh. But I'm not 100% sure," she said.
We are in a different era now, Smith said.
"The second Trump administration has a much more numerical, targeted approach and a much more committed use of tariffs as an instrument of influence with other countries, be they allies or non-allies," she said. "The president continues to be even more convinced that tariffs are the leverage that America has and should use. If you had a new prime minister tomorrow, you would still have the same problem."
But Matthew Goodman, director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at CFR, said Trump has his own constraints and will be looking for a deal with Japan before his self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline. Trump has threatened to impose a 25% "reciprocal" tariff on Japanese goods on that date.
"Most people believe that this election result will make it more difficult to reach a trade agreement between the two countries. But I believe Trump really needs to reach some big deals," Goodman said.
"If he doesn't reach deals and has to put broad tariffs back onto all these countries, that is going to cause another April 2-like effect with bond markets in particular," he said, referring to the market turmoil that followed Trump's initial announcement of reciprocal tariffs.
"Trump has a greater incentive than people think to reach some kind of deal. And Japan is among the lowest hanging fruit," he said, pointing to the now-eight rounds of negotiations with trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa arriving in Washington on Monday.
The issues are pretty clear, Goodman said. "On Trump's side, he wants more purchases of U.S. exports; he wants easing of auto and agriculture standards in Japan; he wants more Japanese investment in the United States. Ultimately he wants the trade imbalance to be reduced."
On the flip side, Japan's goal in the negotiations is to remove or at least reduce both the reciprocal and sectoral tariffs, especially the 25% on autos and auto parts.
On defense, Michael Green, CEO of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney in Australia, said the concern is the impact on policy delivery.
"Can a weakened LDP really increase defense spending, manage debt and control Trump?" he said.
Jeffrey Hornung of the RAND Corp. warned that the alliance could face renewed friction.
As long as Ishiba is prime minister, he will lack the ability to lay out a long-term strategy, because he will be focused on political survival in the short term, Hornung said. "He's going to be focusing on rice, on inflation, on the consumer tax."
Ishiba will not, for instance, be able to tell the Trump administration what role Japan will play in a potential Taiwan contingency, or how Japan will increase defense spending, Hornung predicted.
But Shawn Harding, a nonresident scholar at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, said that with bureaucrats in charge of managing the alliance continuing their work, the broad direction of the security relationship will not suffer major impacts.
On the surface, there will be differences, he said. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby will continue to press Japan to commit to a percentage of gross domestic product in defense spending, but Japan will dodge such talks and focus more on capabilities, Harding said.