nd these days. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, old alliances have been shaken. Canada and Mexico are furious because Trump imposed tariffs on them. . Europe is terrified because Trump keeps hinting that the US won’t help them in the event of a war, and the latest nation to feel the heat is Japan. Yesterday Donald Trump took a shot at the island nation in the east. He spoke about the US-Japan security partnership and Trump complained that it was unequal.
partnership was unequal Tokyo is trying to downplay Trump’s statement but does it mean that Japan is next on the US president’s hit list? Our next report has the details. When Donald Trump returned to the White House, Japan rushed to forge ties with the US president. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishita was the second foreign leader to meet Trump. He went to Washington to reaffirm the US-Japan friendship and trade ties. Trump was also informed about Japan’s plan to increase its military spending. All this seemed to have worked.
Trump seemed quite happy. Thank you very much. Japan is committed to doubling its defense spending by 2027 compared to my first term. They’ve, uh, invested a lot of money. Uh, and I’m pleased to say that this week my administration approved nearly a billion dollars in foreign military sales to Tokyo. The United States is totally committed to the security of Japan. We will extend the full strength of American deterrence capabilities and defense of our friend and ally. This was probably just what Ishita wanted to hear.
Trump complains security pact with Japan nonreciprocal
But sadly for Japan, yesterday Trump seems to have had a change of heart. You know, with Japan we have a deal, which is a very interesting one and I love Japan. We have a great relationship with Japan but we have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them but they don’t have to protect us. Do you know that?? That’s the way the deal reads. We have to protect Japan. And by the way, they make a fortune with us economically. There’s another case. But we have to protect Japan but under no circumstances do they have to.
protect us I actually ask who makes these deals. Trump may have said he loves Japan but Tokyo was obviously worried about his statement. Top Japanese officials rushed to issue clarifications. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary said article 5 of the Japan The US-Japan security treaty stipulates that Japan and the US will respond jointly to armed attacks on Japan. Article six allows the US to use Japanese facilities to contribute to Japan’s security and to maintain international peace and security in the Far East. He’s basically saying that Japan.
isn’t being protected for free The security pact allows the US to have military bases in Japan and troops. About 60,000 American soldiers are stationed in Japan, mostly in the Japanese islands of Okinawa, which are close to Taiwan. This allows the US to be within easy striking distance of China. It gives Washington a massive strategic advantage. And what’s more, Japan is subsidizing this advantage. Last year Tokyo paid $2.
Trump complains about Japan-US security pact
9 billion to maintain the US troop presence In the past it was suggested that it was cheaper for the US to keep the troops in Japan than to bring them home. This topic had come up during Trump’s first term because he had complained about the security pact back then as well. It’s clear that Trump still isn’t over the issue and yesterday’s comments suggest that he could weaponize it to demand trade concessions from Japan. You heard him say that Japan makes a fortune off the US so he might bring it up when Japan’s trade minister visits.
Washington Trump has appended traditional US partnerships since his return to office. He has imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico and then paused some. He has threatened to walk away from Europe if they don’t increase their defense spending. And now it seems that Japan is in for the same treatment as well. [Music] Hi, how are you?? Very well,, thank you.. Thank you for being here. Namaste. Mr. President, Namaste. How many people generally follow you in interviews? Typically in a month we have, uh, viewers to 150 million. That’s more than.
twice the population of France And in the last two years, we had three billion viewers so I say, Lon, this is your chance to be famous. You’re on the first post. One word to describe your equation with Prime Minister Modi As India and France work together, are you creating a new era of non-alignment in the technology space? India is training more engineers a year, more than all of Europe and the US combined. So we have that partnership. We have a partnership on the environment and the economy. We also have civilian.
US-Japan alliance unequal, Trump complains
nuclear programs and that is something we’ve developed far beyond the France-India relationship. So we want to work together on AI and then comes China with its deep-creating models at a fraction of the cost. Did that innovation take you by surprise? Did that breakthrough make you sit up and think, What did the Chinese do and how? But what did Deep Seek do? They took everything that was already available from the last AI model and then, uh, they recalibrated it. So are you going to ban Chinese AI in France?
