Japan will not sacrifice the agricultural sector as part of its tariff negotiations with the United States, its top government spokesperson said on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump complained that its ally was not importing American rice.
Trump wrote in a social media post that Japan's reluctance to import American-grown rice was a sign that countries have become "spoiled with respect to the United States of America."
"I have great respect for Japan, they won't take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage," he wrote on Truth Social.
Japan has been grappling with a doubling in rice prices due partly to a weather-driven poor-quality harvest in 2023 that caused a shortage last year. The government has released almost its entire stock of emergency rice since March in an effort to bring prices down.
"We are not thinking about doing anything that would sacrifice the farm sector," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a press conference.
He, as well as farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi, declined to comment directly on Trump's post. Koizumi told a separate press conference that his ministry would continue to work with various ministries toward maximizing Japan's national interests.