When United States President Donald Trump announced his latest tariffs on steel and aluminium this week, he insisted there would be “no exemptions, no exceptions”.
Washington’s closest allies in the Asia-Pacific are hoping that they will be able to change the mercurial US president’s mind.
Japan, South Korea and Australia, US treaty allies with export-reliant economies, have all confirmed that they are seeking exemptions from Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminium.
Trump has pledged to follow up on the measures against imported steel and aluminium with broader reciprocal tariffs, which could potentially cover a far wider range of goods, on countries that impose levies on US exports as soon as Thursday.
“We will take necessary measures, including lobbying the United States for an exemption, while closely monitoring any possible impact on the Japanese economy,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who met Trump in Washington last week, told parliament on Wednesday.
Tokyo’s efforts to sway Trump are likely to include commitments to increase US imports.
The US trade deficit with Japan stood at about $70bn last year, mostly as a result of exports by Japanese automakers such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
Tokyo is also likely to highlight its importance as an ally in confronting China in the region and “its technical advantage, which is desperately needed by the US to take a lead in new strategic industries”, said Shigeto Nagai, the Asia head of Oxford Economics.
“Japan enjoys a large trade surplus with the US for machineries, which gives incentive to the US to impose tariffs,” Nagai told Al Jazeera.
“At the same time, the technological advantage of Japanese machineries such as semiconductor equipment and materials will make it difficult to quickly find substitutes.”
After their talks at the White House on Friday, Trump and Ishiba released a joint statement acknowledging the Republican’s agenda of boosting domestic industry, including a pledge to strengthen energy security by “unleashing the United States’ affordable and reliable energy and natural resources”.
At the same time, Ishiba impressed upon Trump that Japan has been the largest foreign investor in the US for the past five years running and announced plans for $1 trillion in further investments, including in artificial intelligence.
“My sense is that this [tariff exemptions] remains negotiable,” Ryota Abe, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), told Al Jazeera.
“The adverse impacts on the US economy would not be small should the relationship between the two seriously be damaged. And this would not be the best choice even for the US.”
Although the contours of his second administration’s policy priorities are still unfolding, Trump has taken his reputation for being fond of a deal with him from his first term.
Despite insisting that his tariffs would apply to all countries, Trump almost immediately left the door open to an exception for Australia, saying he would give “great consideration” to an exemption.
“We have a surplus with Australia, one of the few,” Trump said.
Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, poured cold water on those hopes the following day, claiming that Australia was “killing” the US aluminium market.
Australia’s aluminium exports surged after Trump first entered office in 2016, peaking at about 269,000 tonnes in 2019.
Exports have fluctuated considerably since then, coming in at 83,000 tonnes in 2024, down from 210,000 the previous year.
“Overall, the second Trump administration is acting both more ruthlessly and chaotically than the first, so allies like Japan – and Australia, and NATO/EU [European Union] allies – will continue to confront a highly volatile and difficult diplomatic situation, which will require extremely dextrous leadership,” Craig Mark, an adjunct lecturer in economics at Hosei University in Tokyo, told Al Jazeera.
During his first term, Trump did not adopt a uniform approach to granting reprieves to friendly countries and allies.
In 2018, his administration exempted Australia from steel and aluminium tariffs and granted South Korea a duty-free steel quota of up to 2.63 million tonnes.
But his administration did not extend such relief to Japan.
The administration of former US President Joe Biden eased the tariffs on Japanese steel in 2022, agreeing to allow 1.25 million metric tonnes of steel to enter the US each year duty-free while keeping tariffs on aluminium in place.
“The experience of the first Trump administration shows how Japan could find itself the target of US tariffs yet again, despite all its diplomatic efforts,” said Mark, the Hosei University professor, pointing out that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe went to “great lengths to build a close personal relationship with Trump”.
While Trump has a “much more expansive view of his remit”, compared with his first term, and views tariffs as a “genuinely valuable tool that can be used to solve a myriad of problems”, the overriding feature of his administration is uncertainty, said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.
Elms said she was not certain Trump himself would be able to provide answers about his policy direction or goals, “or if he did so, that his answers now would be the same as what he might say in another hour or day or week”.
“As he’s the one driving trade policy – for the moment, at least – this lack of clarity matters,” Elms told Al Jazeera.
