Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Friday that he had again pressed US President Donald Trump on tariffs, in a phone call ahead of fresh talks on easing the levies.Japan, a key US ally and its biggest investor, is subject to the same 10 percent baseline tariffs imposed on most nations plus steeper levies on cars, steel and aluminium.Trump also announced 24 percent “reciprocal” tariffs on Japan in early April, but later paused them along with similar measures on other countries until early July.Ishiba said he spoke with Trump for 45 minutes on Friday morning — Thursday evening in Washington — and that a “broad range of topics were discussed, including tariffs and economic security”.”I conveyed to him Japan’s position on US tariffs,” Ishiba told a news conference in Tokyo, adding that there was “no change to our calls for the removal of tariffs”. “As I’ve said before, it’s not just about tariffs but about investment. There will also be no change to our position that Japan and the US will cooperate on generating employment in the US,” he said.The comments came as Japan’s tariffs envoy, economic revitalisation minister Ryosei Akazawa, left for Washington for a third round of talks.”The series of tariff measures taken by the US are regrettable. We’ll strongly demand a review of these measures,” Akazawa told reporters at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. “But we have to reach an agreement, so it has to be win-win for both sides. We’ll listen carefully to the various proposals and ideas of the US side, and look for common ground between the two sides,” he said.Public broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media reported, citing government sources, that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would not attend the talks this time. Akazawa would travel again to Washington on May 30, the reports said.Trump’s 25-percent auto tariffs are particularly painful for Tokyo, with roughly eight percent of all Japanese jobs tied to the sector.Early this month, the Trump administration also slapped a new 25 percent import tax on auto parts including engines and transmissions.At the White House in February, Ishiba had promised Trump that yearly Japanese investment would increase to $1 trillion.”Although the recent US-China and US-UK trade deals indicate that Washington is aiming to de-escalate trade tensions, Japan-US negotiations have made little headway,” said Stefan Angrick at Moody’s Analytics.”Japan’s position as the world’s largest foreign investor in the US hasn’t shielded it from tariff threats, so promising more investment is an unconvincing bargaining chip,” he added.

Southeast Asian leaders will express deep concern over US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz when they meet at a summit Monday, warning that the unilateral move posed huge challenges to economic growth and stability in the region, according to a draft statement seen by AFP. Trump’s tariffs has roiled global markets and upended international commerce, and left leaders from the 10-member ASEAN bloc scrambling for ways to limit the fallout on their trade-dependent economies.The bloc is also caught between the trade battle between their biggest trading partners, the United States and China, on which Washington has heaped the highest tariffs.According to a draft statement expected to be issued by ASEAN leaders after they meet on Monday, they express “deep concern… over the imposition of unilateral tariff measures”.Trump’s measures “pose complex and multidimensional challenges to ASEAN’s economic growth, stability, and integration”, according to the draft of the ASEAN chairman’s statement seen by AFP.The leaders also “reaffirmed ASEAN’s collective commitment” to the global free trading system, it said.After the bloc’s meeting on Monday, the leaders are to hold a one-day summit with China and Middle Eastern oil producers.The diplomatic dance continues later in the week in neighbouring Singapore, where the Shangri-La Dialogue forum is expected to draw defence chiefs including US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, while French President Emmanuel Macron was due to give the keynote speech.ASEAN, with Malaysia holding its rotating chair this year, has traditionally kept a neutral stance in global power contests but that policy is under strain because of Trump’s protectionist moves, analysts say.Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has called for a joint ASEAN action plan to address the growing tariff threat.Anwar said at a pre-summit briefing that, while bilateral talks between member states and the United States would continue, the bloc must present a united front.”We also have one position as ASEAN in our talks,” he said.The group, Anwar said, “had very practical policies… and what to me is of critical importance is to build that cohesion within ASEAN”.The pressure to shift ASEAN’s “friend to all” posture will likely intensify during the follow-up summit on Tuesday when Chinese Premier Li Qiang joins the bloc’s leaders and officials from oil-rich Gulf states, observers said.-‘Principled friend’ -Beijing has been courting closer ties with Southeast Asia, positioning itself as a “reliable trading partner” despite tensions with ASEAN members over rival claims in the South China Sea.Li will attend the first-time summit between ASEAN, Beijing and oil-producing nations including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.That follows Chinese President Xi Jinping urging greater cooperation between Beijing and Malaysia “to safeguard the bright prospects of our Asian family” during a Southeast Asian diplomatic charm offensive in April.Anwar said in return that Malaysia would “remain an unwavering and principled friend to China”.However, anger over US tariffs also meant that ASEAN countries “won’t automatically fall in China’s arms”, a diplomatic source, who asked not to be identified, told AFP.”It’s not a binary situation. ASEAN knows that China is just like the US in that it’s a big power which will bully them when it wants to,” the source said.And “while the general consensus is that they are angry at the US… nobody wants to offend Washington either”.James Chin, professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania, warned that playing to both the United States and China was a “high-risk strategy”.The danger of staying neutral is “that every single foreign policy action that you take will then be scrutinised” by each opposing power, Chin said.Others said ASEAN’s policy of neutrality remained valid.”The rest of the world should not have any problem with ASEAN’s position to ‘be friends with everyone’,” said S. Munirah Alatas, a geopolitics specialist at the University of Malaya’s Allianz Centre for Governance.However, she said the bloc still faced tough unresolved challenges, including “hostilities in Myanmar and recurring tensions in the South China Sea”.”But successfully addressing these are not premised on ASEAN’s neutral geopolitical position,” she said.