WASHINGTON – The United States has admitted to a “mistake” in implementing part of a bilateral trade deal with Japan and has agreed to rectify the situation in line with the terms agreed by the two sides around two weeks ago, a Japanese negotiator said Thursday.
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief tariff negotiator, told reporters in Washington that the United States has also promised that import taxes collected due to the mistake will be refunded to importers.
Akazawa met the press following meetings with U.S. Cabinet members. After three hours of talks with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Washington, Akazawa met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for about half an hour, according to the Japanese government.
President Donald Trump’s country-specific tariffs took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, without giving Japanese imports the special treatment Tokyo believed it had secured under the trade agreement.
The biggest issue at stake is whether a 15 percent tariff set by Trump for imports from Japan will be stacked on top of other duties already in place.
When Akazawa was last in Washington around two weeks ago, he and Trump reached the agreement under which the import tariff for Japan was set at 15 percent.
The rate is lower than the 24 percent announced on April 2, when Trump imposed country-specific tariffs on dozens of trading partners before pausing them for 90 days for negotiations, and the 25 percent he threatened on July 7.
Under the July 22 agreement, the Trump administration also pledged to cut U.S. auto tariffs to 15 percent from the current 27.5 percent for vehicles and car parts from Japan, in return for Tokyo’s promise of massive investment in the United States.
However, when the lower rate will take effect remains unclear.
AloJapan.com