Japan’s Akazawa Faces Optics Risk as Bessent Visits

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(Bloomberg) -- Japan’s top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa may come under renewed pressure in the coming days as he faces the risk of missing out on talks with a US official entrusted with trade negotiations when he visits Osaka.

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US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is set to visit the World Expo in Osaka on July 19 to celebrate the US National Day, but there’s been no signal yet on a possible meeting with Akazawa for trade talks.

That puts Akazawa in an awkward position. Bessent is part of the White House triumvirate of President Donald Trump’s aides who are leading US efforts to reach global trade deals. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are other top administration officials who are working on the trade deals.

Missing Bessent entirely looks bad, giving a clear sign that the US is keeping Japan at arm’s length as negotiations continue toward an Aug. 1 deadline. Conversely, a potential meeting that yields little progress may instead reinforce the view among voters that the government’s negotiation team is making little headway, as the country heads into an upper house election on July 20.

There’s no sign so far that Akazawa can score big points on his home turf, after Trump announced this week he’ll raise across-the-board tariffs on Japan to 25% on Aug. 1, in a letter that infuriated some leading members of the ruling party. The two nations remain at odds over separate 25% levies on cars and car parts — a major source of US trade deficits with Japan, and a key industry for the Asian nation.

“If the US were to make major concessions and reduce car tariffs to zero, that would score huge points for Japan, but that won’t happen,” said Yoshihiro Katayama, a former Internal Affairs Minister. “So the best outcome would be to hold meetings and say they agreed to continue discussions.”

Since April, Akazawa has traveled seven times to Washington for talks, logging 94,780 flight miles — a distance that’s more than a third of the way to the moon. Most times, he had left Japan without a confirmed schedule of meetings and in the latest round of talks, he missed in-person talks with Bessent and two of his three conversations with Lutnick happened on the phone.

The latest move from Trump this week has struck a nerve with the ruling party’s policy chief Itsunori Onodera. He said Tuesday that it’s not something that can be accepted, and it’s extremely rude to unilaterally send a letter to an ally.

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Roughly 400 kms (250 miles) from Tokyo, the Expo in Osaka is also functioning as a diplomatic venue this year. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who led his country’s delegation for trade talks with the US last month in London, is reportedly visiting Osaka on Friday, China’s national day at the Expo.

He met Hiroshi Moriyama, the Secretary-General of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party there, and the two sides discussed restarting shipments of some Japanese beef to China, according to local media.

Boosting trade with China “is a good strategy and I think that will send a message to the US,” showing that Washington’s higher tariffs can send Japan’s business elsewhere, Katayama said.

The former minister doubted that Bessent coming to Japan purely for the Expo, and didn’t rule out the possibility that he would use his Osaka visit to meet Chinese officials on trade.

(Corrects to remove references to Lutnick, who’s not on the White House’s official delegation list for the trip, in headline and paragraphs 2, 10 and 11.)