The Washington Post - 28 October 2025
Trump signs rare earth minerals deal with Japan ahead of China meeting
President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Tuesday signed a framework agreement to cooperate on critical minerals, as the United States seeks to limit dependency on China for the materials, which are essential components in everything from cellphones to jet engines.
Trump inked the agreement two days before he is scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, where the leaders will seek to stabilize their economic relationship following months of a tit-for-tat trade war. China has leveraged its dominance of rare earth minerals amid the negotiations, announcing earlier this month that it would dramatically expand export restrictions on them.
At a signing ceremony at Akasaka Palace, less than a week after she was named prime minister and immediately thrust into high-level diplomatic engagements, Takaichi faced a key test of whether she could build inroads with the American president as the countries grapple with the threat of China, security commitments and trade tensions.
Trump indicated that Japan had agreed to increase its defense spending following pressure from his administration, but he did not respond when asked about the specific amount he was seeking.
The new prime minister billed the critical minerals deal as the beginning of a “new golden age” of Japan-U. S. relations, appealing to the president’s penchant for gilded aesthetics.
U.S. negotiators have sought a one-year reprieve from China’s critical mineral restrictions ahead of Trump’s meeting with Xi on Thursday, though the president has cautioned no deal will be final until the leaders meet face-to-face. The Japan agreement is one of a flurry of critical mineral partnerships that the White House has secured with countries in the Indo-Pacific region, including Australia and Malaysia.
Trump’s visit to Japan is his second stop on a swing through Asia intended in part to shore up U.S. alliances with countries near China. The American president heaped praise on Japan’s first female prime minister, a “Japan First” nationalist who was a protégé of former leader Shinzo Abe. Trump said he enjoyed a “great” friendship with Abe before he was assassinated in 2022 and told Takaichi that Abe spoke warmly of her before his death.
“I want to just let you know, anytime you have any question, any doubt, anything you want, any favors you need, anything I can do to help Japan, we will be there,” Trump said. “We are an ally at the strongest level. ”
While Trump has cultivated European and Middle Eastern leaders during his second term, he doesn’t have a go-to Asian counterpart. Tuesday’s bilateral was a preliminary assessment of whether Takaichi could fill that void.
“There’s not really any significant head of state with that relationship,” said Takayuki Nishiyama, a political science professor at Seikei University. “With regard to Prime Minister Takaichi, she is a very smart person and gives a very good impression. But at the same time her foreign and diplomatic experience is limited at this point. It is an unknown.”
Like some other foreign leaders, Takaichi approached Trump with a combination of flattery and gifts — and promises of Nobel nominations. The Japanese prime minister told Trump that she would put him forward for the Nobel Peace Prize, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, appealing to Trump’s attempts to build a reputation as a global peacemaker.
Takaichi presented Trump papers related to the nomination during their bilateral meeting, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting. The suggestion is a page out of Abe’s playbook — Abe reportedly nominated Trump in 2019 for jump-starting negotiations with North Korea — but one that several other leaders have also proffered this year.
Takaichi also presented Trump with a golf bag signed by Japanese professional golfer Hideki Matsuyama and Abe’s putter, harking back to Abe’s gift of a golden golf driver to Trump shortly after the latter first won election in 2016.
Over a lunch of American rice and beef cooked with Japanese ingredients, the prime minister also presented Trump with a map of the investments Japan is making into the United States, after the country committed to pour $550 billion into the United States in exchange for lower tariffs. In return, Trump signed lunch menus for Takaichi and her delegation.
Takaichi also announced that Japan would give the United States 250 cherry blossom trees and provide fireworks for a July 4 celebration ahead of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.
Takaichi thanked Trump for his hospitality toward Abe’s widow, who visited the first couple in December at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after Trump’s victory. She praised his handling of recent conflicts, including in the Middle East and signing the Thailand-Cambodia ceasefire agreement over the weekend.
“As a matter of fact, Prime Minister Abe often told me about your dynamic diplomacy,” Takaichi said in remarks at the beginning of their meeting, which took place in a room with golden fixtures that resembled the new accents Trump has added to the Oval Office in his second term.
Takaichi believes in a strong U.S.-Japan alliance, particularly in the face of China's economic and military rise. Takaichi, a security hawk who wants to strengthen Japan's defense capabilities, has said she would accelerate Tokyo's timeline of increasing defense spending to 2 percent of its gross domestic product. The two leaders were also expected to discuss the bilateral trade deal, under which Japan promised to invest $550 billion into the United States.
For the U.S. delegation, there were some familiar faces across the table.
Ryosei Akazawa, who led tariff negotiations for Japan with the U.S. and now serves in Takaichi’s cabinet, greeted his U.S. counterparts, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, ahead of the Trump-Takaichi meeting.
Toshimitsu Motegi, Takaichi’s foreign minister, served in the same role under Abe during Trump’s first term.
After signing the critical mineral deals, Trump and Takaichi met with the families of more than a dozen Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
Further unsettling some here is Trump’s stated desire to extend his trip to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump’s dealings with Kim during his first term concerned Japanese officials, partly because they worried about being sidelined from the negotiations, given Tokyo’s serious concerns with Pyongyang’s nuclear program and unresolved issues over the abductions.
“There is a dependent trust that exists in Japan toward the U.S. There’s a fear that Trump won’t honor that and will leave Japan behind,” Nishiyama said. “Japan alone cannot contain places like North Korea. If the United States distances itself from Asia, there is huge concern regarding national security.”
Officials here at times struggle to analyze Trump’s decisions, which are not only unpredictable but come with a top-down style that can make working-level staff discussions less useful.
Some have been particularly frustrated about Trump’s tariffs, which targeted Japan’s main industries and afforded Japan no special treatment, despite it being the largest foreign investor in the United States and a key partner in U.S. efforts to counter an increasingly assertive China.
That’s one reason the stakes were so high for Takaichi’s first encounter with the American president, said Takeo Mori, a career diplomat and adviser to the minister for foreign affairs.
“It is so important to establish the personal relationship first,” Mori said in an interview in his office, which contains several photos of him with Trump. “Everything else can come after.”
