Every few decades Washington tests Tokyo with the same ritual: threaten, squeeze, then pocket a concession. In the 1980s it forced voluntary export restraints on cars and a quota on chips; in 2019 it re‑emerged as Section 232 steel duties, a hurried farm‑deal, and the threat of 25 percent auto tariffs. Trump even stapled a quadrupling of troop‑hosting fees to the offer, turning a security alliance into pay‑to‑play. Japanese negotiators recognize the game—the katsu‑age shakedown—but must still navigate METI, MAFF, farm barons, and voters who rely on the U.S. shield. Each capitulation lowers the price of the next, warping supply chains, inflating car prices, and feeding unilateral bravado while the WTO’s appeals court sits vacant. Value‑added data show the vaunted bilateral deficit shrinks or swells by accounting trickery, yet deficit politics sells. Tokyo’s counter‑moves—planting factories in Ohio, leading the CPTPP, and schooling Congress on shared value chains—slow the cycle yet fail to end it. Unless allies rebuild enforcement and reshape the narrative, the next demand will land on schedule, and the real negotiation will be whether fear of saying no finally outweighs the cost of saying yes.
