
Toyota cuts full-year forecast after flagging $9.5bn tariff hit
YUICHI SHIGA
TOKYO -- Toyota Motor expects a 1.4 trillion yen ($9.5bn) hit to operating profit for the year through March 2026 from the tariff on automobiles imported to the U.S. imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, it said on Thursday.

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Japan Today
28 minutes ago
- Japan Today
China says trade jumped in July, beating forecasts
China and the United States agreed in Stockholm last month to hold further on extending their tariff truce China's exports beat expectations and rose 7.2 percent year-on-year in July, official data showed Thursday, as overseas shipments buoyed its struggling economy even as it navigated a shaky trade war truce with the United States. The two economic superpowers agreed in Stockholm last month to hold further talks on extending the tariff truce. That deal has temporarily set fresh U.S. duties on Chinese goods at 30 percent, while Beijing's levies on U.S. goods stand at 10 percent. The accord -- initially agreed in Geneva in May -- brought down triple-digit tariffs each side had imposed on the other after Donald Trump launched his "Liberation Day" levies on April 2. The 90-day truce is set to end on August 12, when the original duties could snap back. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said following the Stockholm talks that Trump would have the "final say" on any extension of a tariffs truce between Washington and Beijing. Higher tariffs on dozens of trading partners -- including a blistering 35 percent on Canada -- came into force Thursday as Trump seeks to reshape global trade to benefit the U.S. economy. He has also threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on semiconductor imports. Thursday's data showing an increase in China's overseas shipments last month outpaced a Bloomberg forecast of 5.6 percent. But the figures also showed that China's exports to the United States, its largest trading partner, continued to fall, sinking 6.1 percent from the previous month. And imports -- a key gauge of struggling domestic demand -- jumped 4.1 percent year-on-year in July, compared with a Bloomberg forecast of a one-percent fall. Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, said the data showed "exports supported the economy strongly so far this year". "Export growth may slow in coming months, as the front loading of exports due to US tariffs fades away," he said. "The big question is how much China's exports will slow and how it would spill over to the rest of the economy." Beijing has said an official goal of around five percent growth this year. But it has struggled to maintain a strong economic recovery from the pandemic, as it fights a debt crisis in its massive property sector, chronically low consumption and elevated youth unemployment. Factory output shrank more than expected in July, data showed last week. © 2025 AFP


The Diplomat
an hour ago
- The Diplomat
Seoul's Strategic Dilemma: Navigating a High-Stakes Summit With Trump
When Donald Trump and Lee Jae-myung meet, the very definition of the 70-year-old South Korea-U.S. alliance will be on the table. 'Fasten your seat belt. We are going through turbulence.' This was the stark metaphor South Korea's new foreign minister, Cho Hyun, offered in a recent interview to describe the global security environment. His words aptly capture the challenge facing Seoul as President Lee Jae-myung prepares for his first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, expected later this month. Cho's diplomatic debut in Washington – marked by a crucial meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio – has set the stage for a high-stakes encounter. With a contentious trade deal now settled, the focus has pivoted entirely to the more perilous terrain of defense and security, where the very definition of the 70-year-old South Korea-U.S. alliance is on the table. The summit's agenda will be driven by Trump's transactional worldview, forcing the new progressive administration in Seoul to navigate a set of formidable U.S. demands. The central thesis of the summit is clear: the South Korea-U.S. alliance must now prove its 'return on investment' to a skeptical Washington. This will test Lee's statesmanship as he attempts to secure ironclad U.S. security guarantees against North Korea while parrying a relentless U.S. push for Seoul to 'pay up and pivot' toward confronting China – a dilemma starkly reflected in his foreign minister's recent tightrope diplomacy and Beijing's wary response. Washington's New Calculus: The Price of a 'Modernized' Alliance Trump's primary demands are expected to be as direct as they are challenging, coalescing around two core pillars: a radical increase in financial contributions and a strategic pivot toward countering China, all packaged under the diplomatic framework of 'alliance modernization.' The 'pay up' component is familiar ground. Drawing from the playbook of his first term, Trump is widely expected to open negotiations over the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) with an astronomical figure to anchor the conversation. More strategically significant, however, is the 'pivot.' This push is being championed by key administration figures like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, a principal architect of the 'America First' security strategy. In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), Colby praised South Korea as a 'role model' for its defense spending and willingness to take the lead against North Korean threats, yet simultaneously emphasized that the two allies are 'closely aligned on the need to modernize the alliance.' For Colby and this school of strategists, 'modernization' means rectifying what they see as a strategic misallocation of resources. As one senior South Korean official recently acknowledged, this means there 'may be changes to the role and character of USFK.' This 'modernization' is not about minor adjustments. It is a fundamental effort to repurpose U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), moving beyond its traditional mission of deterring North Korea to endow it with the 'strategic flexibility' for regional contingencies aimed at China. This could be achieved not by altering the 28,500 statutory troop cap, but by changing the mission sets of those forces or withholding rotational deployments, a move potentially justified under broad interpretations of the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty. The official readout from the Cho-Rubio meeting confirmed this is not mere speculation. It explicitly noted that both sides 'emphasized that maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait was an indispensable element' of international security and discussed the importance of advancing 'U.S.-ROK-Japan trilateral cooperation.' Seoul's High-Wire Act: Defending Sovereignty and Security Faced with this immense pressure, the Lee administration must perform a delicate balancing act. Cho's Washington Post interview provided a masterclass in this high-wire diplomacy. He acknowledged China as a 'challenge' and 'competitor' but immediately stressed the 'need for engaging China, because simply trying to block China will not be as effective as we want.' This careful phrasing, however, was interpreted in Beijing as 'ambivalence,' with Chinese state-affiliated media warning Seoul not to be used as leverage by a 'third party.' This exchange vividly illustrates the bind Seoul is in: every statement intended to reassure Washington is scrutinized in Beijing, and vice-versa. This strategic divergence exposes underlying fault lines in the alliance. As noted by analysts in Seoul, the official U.S. call for the 'complete denuclearization of the DPRK' or North Korea – a phrase included in the State Department readout – differs subtly but significantly from the traditional preference of South Korean progressive governments for 'denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,' a broader formulation designed to create space for dialogue with Pyongyang. To counter Washington's pressure, Lee will arrive with his own non-negotiable demands. The top priority will be securing an ironclad, unambiguous reaffirmation of U.S. extended deterrence, including the nuclear umbrella. With North Korea's deepening military cooperation with Russia, any ambiguity in the U.S. commitment is an existential threat. Alongside this, South Korea's president will push for progress on the transfer of wartime military operational control (OPCON). This long-standing goal, domestically framed as a matter of military sovereignty, inherently resonates with the U.S. administration's burden-sharing narrative by demonstrating Seoul's commitment to greater self-reliance. Redefining Success in a Transactional World Ultimately, the stakes of this summit are monumental, both for Lee's government and for the future of Northeast Asian security. His credibility as a statesman is on the line as he navigates between Trump's demands, China's red lines, and a deeply polarized domestic public still emerging from a major political crisis. Success, therefore, will not be defined by a grand bargain or a transformative joint vision. Rather, it will be measured by the skillful management of risk and the preservation of core interests. A successful outcome for Lee would be returning to Seoul having secured a manageable, multiyear SMA deal, a joint statement that reaffirms the alliance's strength without explicitly committing USFK to an anti-China mission, and a strong public reaffirmation from Trump on extended deterrence and troop levels. The primary criterion is to leave Washington with the South Korea-U.S. alliance intact, but without having started a new crisis with either Washington or Beijing. In the turbulent world of transactional diplomacy, a calm news cycle following the summit would be the clearest sign of victory.


Nikkei Asia
6 hours ago
- Nikkei Asia
Toyota cuts full-year forecast after flagging $9.5bn tariff hit
A participant looks at a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck at the Colorado Auto Show in Denver on April 17. © AP YUICHI SHIGA TOKYO -- Toyota Motor expects a 1.4 trillion yen ($9.5bn) hit to operating profit for the year through March 2026 from the tariff on automobiles imported to the U.S. imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, it said on Thursday.