Danica Davidson
April 10, 2025 
Things keep shifting with President Trump’s tariffs, and yesterday afternoon the president put a 90-day pause on tariff hikes, but also raised China’s (which, as of this writing, is at 145%). For now, many countries have a baseline tariff of 10% during the pause. While people around the globe are reeling from uncertainties, financial magazine Barron’s published a piece arguing that Japan would be the country hurt worst by tariffs from America.
The article, published April 8, was written by William Pesek, author of Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan’s Lost Decades, a former columnist for Barron’s and Bloomberg, and a resident of Tokyo.
He opens his piece with, “President Donald Trump’s wealth-annihilating tariffs have wiped out more than two Japanese economies’ worth of global market capitalization. The $10 trillion loss—relative to Japan’s $4.4 trillion of gross domestic product—comes as recession talk plagues the country.”
He points out that not only is Japan facing a 24% tariff in general, it also has a 25% tariff on automobiles and their parts. And as popular as manga and anime are around the globe, cars are still Japan’s main export by a large margin.
Pesek argues that Japan feels deeply betrayed by America’s current administration. He also says that because Japan has chronically flat wages, its inflation is ahead of its earnings, and its government has purposefully chosen to weaken the yen in order to get more exports sold, the country is in a very vulnerable position in regards to tariffs. What’s going on now could make the yen “skyrocket” and therefore the country would have even more difficulty with exports.
Japan, China and South Korea don’t always get along, but right now all three countries are talking about how to handle these tariffs. The three countries’ trade ministers say they want “a global level playing field to foster a free, open, fair, nondiscriminatory, transparent, inclusive and predictable trade and investment environment.”
Japan is attempting to negotiate with President Trump on the tariffs, so right now things remain very much up in the air. One of the first things from Japan to be noticeably affected by the tariffs was the U.S. pre-order date for the Switch 2, because Nintendo was not prepared for nor expecting such high tariff rates.
Source: Barron’s
_____
Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
Related Posts
