🇯🇵🇺🇸 - neither “done” nor “deal” 🇯🇵Akazawa: US Will Cut Car Tariffs Once Levy Stacking Is Removed Excerpt below from a note in the works - my commentary on 🇯🇵Trade Minister Akazawa’s X post after leaving the Oval “sealing deal” w/ Trump (which I translated) 🧵

“First of all - I don’t know if Akazawa-san is familiar with the phrase “Mission Accomplished” in context of America post-9/11… …or, perhaps Akazawa actually does know exactly what “Mission Accomplished” means / is associated with (particularly in the White House), and is purposely using it with ominously subtle purposes and intention. Either way, Akazawa saying “Mission Accomplished” (in the GW Bush way) prior to Ishiba or anyone from the Japan side even made any public statement on the “Japan trade deal” that Trump had announced turned out to be very fitting. It still is very fitting. Akazawa-san, I am sympathetic to the very difficult position you have been enduring, wedged between two political sociopaths Ishiba and Trump, and I do respect effort of 8 full round trips across the planet throughout this ordeal - but if you are taking a stance of (literal or figurative) “Mission Accomplished” right after the Trump Oval Office meeting, then at best, you are naively taking a premature victory lap with very little “accomplished,” and at worst, you actually mean it - and the mission for which to accoplish this whole time was to score some momentary flashy but materially empty headlines, rather than to actually structure a major economic relationship.”