(Bloomberg) -- US President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized the US-Japan Security Treaty, highlighting how the US is obliged to protect Japan under the agreement but Japan does not offer the same security guarantees in return.
“We have a great relationship with Japan, but we have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don’t have to protect us,” Trump said to reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office.
“And by the way, they make a fortune with us economically,” Trump added, before voicing his grievance with a question: “I actually asked who makes these deals?”
Trump’s displeasure with the treaty is likely to stoke fears in Japan that he will eventually set his sights on extracting a security or trade deal from Japan, which has so far managed to avoid being a direct tariff target. The country’s trade surplus against the US is likely to remain a source of irritation for the US president.
The comments echo similar complaints made by Trump during his first term. He is said to have mused about withdrawing from the treaty given the perceived imbalance.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi stressed the importance of the longstanding Japan-US alliance in a regular press briefing held Friday.
“We have the utmost confidence that the US will use all its capabilities, including its nuclear capabilities, to fulfill its obligations under the Japan-US Security Treaty,” he said.
Hayashi also touched on a separate law that interprets Japan’s self-defense rules to be applied to collective self-defense, saying that it “has enabled Japan and the US to seamlessly assist each other in any situation in order to protect Japan.”
First signed in 1951 and revised in 1960, the security treaty grants the US the right to base military forces in Japan in exchange for the promise that America will defend the nation if it is ever attacked.
The treaty was signed as part of the US strategic interest in maintaining a foothold against the communist bloc in Asia during the Cold War, and has remained in place as the region’s security becomes increasingly tense with China’s military ambitions and the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea.
It also serves as the basis for the largest overseas US military presence in the world, with some 60,000 military members currently stationed in Japan, according to US Forces Japan.
Japan has a pacifist clause in its constitution that effectively bars the nation from getting involved in foreign conflicts, but a decade ago Prime Minister Shinzo Abe loosened restrictions to allow Japan’s military to help defend allies when they are under attack near Japan.
Trump’s comments come after current Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has also expressed concerns about an imbalance in the military relationship between Japan and the US, albeit in favor of the US. Ishiba has raised the idea that the Japanese military should have bases in the US for training purposes.
Japan foots some of the bill of maintaining US bases on its land, earmarking some ¥430 billion ($2.9 billion) from its government budget last year. But whether that is enough has also been a point of contention in the past, with Trump reportedly pressuring Tokyo to increase its annual contribution to $8 billion.
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