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Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae meets with US President Donald Trump in Washington, with the Hormuz crisis hanging over their meeting. The Japanese government considers its options in resolving the crisis, potentially in cooperation with European partners. The Bank of Japan holds as it waits to see the impact of the crisis on Japan’s economy. While the prime minister is away, her goal of passing the budget by the end of the month is in trouble.
Summit impressions
Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae is in Washington DC today for her summit with US President Donald Trump.
There was a late schedule change – they scrapped the working lunch at Trump’s request to make more time for talks – and as of this writing the summit is still ongoing, with a dinner scheduled for this evening.
At the most basic level, the summit has been a success for Takaichi insofar as she has avoided any public rift with the Trump administration, despite anxiety before the summit about whether Trump would pressure Japan to send the Self-Defense Forces to support efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz. She greeted Trump with a hug and praised him as the only person who can bring peace to the world; Trump praised her electoral victory and said that Japan is “stepping up to the plate” in the Persian Gulf (“unlike NATO,” he added); and said that he would put in a good word for Japan when he visits China. The most memorable moment from their public discussion in the Oval Office – when Trump, asked about why he attacked Iran without notifying allies first, said that Japan knows more about the element of surprise because of Pearl Harbor – rather than anything related to the issues at stake.
Because they are not doing a full press conference after the summit, it may take some time for details about the discussions to trickle out. The governments released a series of fact sheets and memoranda announcing cooperation on critical minerals supply chains, rare earths mining, and the second tranche of investments as part of the 2025 bilateral agreement, none of which comes as a surprise. There appear to be no plans for a broader joint statement, and what sort of understandings – if any – were reached on the Hormuz crisis, lingering questions about US tariffs, US intentions for Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping, or upcoming host-nation support talks will remain. In her readout following the meeting, Takaichi avoided detailed comments on any of these issues, suggesting that it could take time for the summit’s significance to be apparent.
Japan’s Hormuz approach
While Trump sought to draw a distinction between Japan versus US European allies, before Takaichi met Trump Japan issued a joint statement along with the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands condemning Iran’s attacks and de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz. These partners expressed their “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.”
The joint statement underscores that while Japan has serious national interests at stake from the de facto closure of the strait and Iranian attacks on regional energy infrastructure, there is no appetite for joining a war on Iran to reopen the strait to shipping. Perhaps as another sign of the government’s interest in working with European partners to resolve the crisis, Defense Minister Koizumi Shinjirō will travel to Germany on 22 March for talks with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, leaders of the Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA) and its partners delivered a petition to Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara Minoru demanding that the government clearly inform the United States that Japan cannot dispatch warships at this time, a petition that Kihara said had many points with which he agreed. The CRA may not have much weight within the Diet but it serves as a reminder that the government needs to tread carefully at home. Takaichi herself said beforehand that she was prepared to be blunt about what Japan could and could not do.
For now, it appears that Japan may have avoided having to make an uncomfortable choice about whether to support an active war effort.
