Liam Denning, Columnist

Japan Trade Deal Offers US Automakers Relief, Not New Markets

The peculiar tastes of America’s consumers put its vehicles at a disadvantage overseas that tariffs won’t fix.

July 23, 2025 at 4:59 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Here’s the competition.
Photographer: Kazuhiro Nogi/ AFP via Getty Images

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If only Switzerland would open itself up to US chocolate exports. Oh right, it did. Even so, I’m guessing the master chocolatiers are safe in their Alpine redoubt from an American influx. On a similar note, President Donald Trump’s touted victory in getting Japan to open up to US auto exports as part of Tuesday’s trade deal amounts to very little of substance. It may yet carry a silver lining of sorts for Detroit.

Japan hasn’t levied tariffs on foreign autos for nigh on half a century, a fact that could be easily missed if all you had to go on was Trump’s Truth.