In its haste to impose sweeping tariffs on countries the world over, the Trump administration is now admitting to making an “extremely regrettable” blunder after having accidentally double tariffs on certain products for Japan, and is now vowing to correct the matter, The New York Times reported Friday.
“Washington is just randomly shooting and they are shooting some like-minded countries from behind,” said Japanese lawmaker Taro Kono this week during a press conference.
President Donald Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs went into effect Thursday, including tariffs on Japan, one of the United States’ largest trading partners. However, due to the way Trump’s executive order implementing the tariffs was written, a handful of products saw new tariff rates stacked on top of existing ones, instead of modified, such as beef imports from Japan, rising from 26.4% to 41.4%.
Trump has singled out Japan for its trade relationship with the United States several times in recent months, calling the country “spoiled” for not importing American-made rice, and for not purchasing American-made vehicles, complaints economists have ridiculed the president over for demonstrating a lack of understanding on basic economics.
The latest trade blunder with Japan, The New York Times reporter River Davis argued, was just the latest example of the shoddy implementation of the sweeping tariffs, which continues to heighten tensions between the United States and its trading partners.
“This latest development is another example of how a deal with no publicly disclosed written joint agreement – assembled quickly just days before higher threatened tariffs were set to take effect – is causing confusion and growing tension between the United States and one of its top allies and trading partners,” Davis wrote.
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief trade negotiator, said on Thursday that he had requested of the Trump administration a correction to the White House’s tariff blunders, but added that he had not been given a timeline for the correction, and was only told that the errors would be corrected in a “timely” manner, The New York Times reported.