Politics & Government

Japan Trade Negotiator Akazawa to Give Diet Explanation on U.S. Deal on Aug. 15

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
Economic revitalization minister Ryosei Akazawa, right, shakes hands with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the U.S. pavilion at the Osaka-Kansai Expo in Osaka in July.

Jiji Press

15:04 JST, August 9, 2025

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Economic revitalization minister Ryosei Akazawa will explain the trade agreement reached between Japan and the United States last month at a budget committee meeting of the Diet on Aug. 15, the ruling and opposition parties decided Friday.

Akazawa, Japan’s chief negotiator for tariff talks with the United States, will provide the explanation after discrepancies between Japan and the United States over reciprocal tariffs under President Donald Trump came to light.

The event will take place in an executive meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan asked the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to hold an out-of-session meeting of the committee to discuss issues related to the U.S. tariffs.

With the Japanese and U.S. governments not producing a joint document on the tariff agreement, CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda told a press conference that “this was a huge misjudgment.”

Akazawa said the U.S. side has told him that Washington would revise its executive order on the reciprocal tariffs.

Referring to this, Noda said: “We don’t even know when it will be corrected. The uncertainty can’t be dispelled.”

CDP policy chief Kazuhiko Shigetoku also condemned the government’s handling of the tariff agreement, in a meeting of a task force dealing with Japan-U.S. trade issues held at the Diet building.

“The rationale on which Japan judged that not documenting the agreement is a better way has become less convincing,” he said.

“There is lingering concern that the promise might become a ‘verbal agreement’ again,” Democratic Party for the People chief Yuichiro Tamaki said on X. “An explanation to the Diet is necessary.”

Japan Innovation Party leader Hirofumi Yoshimura, also the governor of Osaka Prefecture, told the press at the prefectural government office that the government must give an explanation on the matter. “What was agreed on is uncertain without any documents on the deal,” he said.