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“Any deal that charges a lower tariff for Japanese imports with virtually no U.S. content than it does North American–built vehicles with high U.S. content is a bad deal for the U.S. industry and U.S. auto workers.”

The country hopes to achieve the same 15% blanket tariff rate from Trump as Japan got this week, but offering as much in investments as Japan did would be difficult for an economy that’s less than half Japan’s size.

The agreement imposes a 15% tariff on all imports to the U.S. from Japan, while creating a $550 billion fund for investments in the United States.

The seeming 15% floor on import taxes is up from the 10% that both the president and his commerce secretary had previously been citing.

In the first nine months of the 2025 fiscal year, interest costs totaled $921 billion, up 6% from the year before. However, firing Powell and pursuing more aggressive cuts to the federal funds rate would save just $12 billion to $15 billion through 2027, according to a recent Deutsche Bank analysis.

“If consumers and foreign firms are not bearing tariff costs, domestic firms are. That is something that eventually should be reflected in corporate earnings announcements.”