Japan eyes tariff deal with US after election results

“I don’t have (such a concern),” Ryosei Akazawa told reporters Monday at an airport near Washington, DC when asked if Japan’s election results would complicate talks.

The ruling coalition lost its upper house majority in Sunday’s vote.

“I believe that both Japan and the United States have a desire to reach some kind of agreement by then,” he added, referring to the upcoming deadline for a pause on President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC however that the administration is “more concerned with high-quality deals” and “we’re not going to rush for the sake of doing deals.”

Akazawa, in Washington for an eighth round of talks, arrived a day after the election, where Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition lost its upper house majority.

Akazawa said he hopes to meet with Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during his visit.

Before Akazawa's arrival, Bessent also pointed out that the priorities of the US are not the internal workings of the Japanese government but getting the best deal for the American people.

At a press conference Monday in Tokyo, Ishiba vowed to stay on as prime minister, emphasizing that Japan is the world's largest investor nation and job creator in the US.

"Therefore, or should I say precisely because of this, we have been saying investment rather than tariffs and making various efforts in a bid to gain the understanding (of the US)," Ishiba said.

Tokyo and Washington have been negotiating a deal to avoid 25% US tariffs on Japanese exports to the world's largest economy.

On July 7, Trump notified several US trading partners of increased country-specific "reciprocal tariff" rates, with Japan due to be subject to 25% tariffs as of Aug. 1 unless another deal is reached beforehand.