Washington has spent decades talking about the U.S.-Japan alliance in military terms. Carrier groups. Missile defense. Deterrence. Those things matter enormously. But the alliance runs far deeper than defense planning, and right now the economic dimension deserves more attention than it is getting.
It runs through factories, ports, semiconductor supply chains, cattle ranches, shipping corridors, food processing systems, and business relationships that never make the evening news.
Understanding why that matters requires being honest about something Washington spent too long avoiding: China is not a trading partner that plays by the rules. It is a strategic competitor that uses economic leverage as a weapon, and every supply chain that runs through Beijing is a vulnerability waiting to be exploited.
Japan figured this out before most American policymakers did.
The U.S.-Japan relationship stands out in the current environment precisely because it is built on something China cannot offer: genuine mutual trust developed over decades of transparent commerce, shared democratic values, and consistent institutional behavior.
That is not a diplomatic abstraction, but rather a practical asset with real economic consequences.
Japan remains badly underestimated by many in Washington. Its food processing and agricultural technology sectors are extraordinarily sophisticated. Precision packaging, cold-chain logistics, sanitation systems and production efficiency are not glamorous topics, but they matter enormously in modern trade.
They reduce waste, improve reliability and create the kind of supply chain stability that China’s record of concealment, manipulation and economic coercion has repeatedly destroyed.
American agricultural producers benefit from the Japanese relationship more than most people realize. Japan is one of the largest overseas markets for U.S. beef, pork, wheat, corn, soybeans, dairy, and seafood. Japanese firms invest heavily inside the United States in automotive manufacturing, logistics, advanced materials, food technology and industrial infrastructure. That is far from dependency. It is the kind of reciprocal economic integration that actually works — because both sides follow the same rules and neither uses market access as a political hostage.
China does. And when it wants to remind you of that fact, it does not send a diplomatic note. It cuts off your supply chain.
Ask any American manufacturer who woke up to find China restricting exports of gallium and germanium — two minerals essential to semiconductors, defense systems and advanced electronics — what Chinese economic partnership actually looks like in practice.
Beijing controls nearly 90% of the world’s rare earth processing capacity. It did not acquire that dominance through superior geology. It acquired it through decades of deliberate state subsidization, below-market pricing designed to drive foreign competitors out of business and a patient willingness to operate at a loss until the competition disappeared. Once the competition was gone, the leverage arrived. It’s a long con.
Japan understood this dynamic earlier than Washington and has spent years building diversified critical mineral supply chains precisely to reduce exposure to Chinese chokepoints. That work is directly relevant to American national security interests right now, and it is one reason the bilateral relationship carries strategic weight beyond what any single trade agreement or defense treaty could capture.
The recent weakness of the yen deserves more attention than it has received. Most commentary treats it as a Japanese problem. That misses half the picture.
A weaker yen lowers costs for American importers, manufacturers and firms purchasing Japanese industrial inputs and specialized technologies. It also encourages additional Japanese investment into the United States at precisely the moment America is trying to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity and cut dangerous supply chain dependence on China. The yen story is, in part, an American opportunity.
President Donald Trump understood the strategic stakes in the Pacific earlier and more clearly than his critics acknowledged. The emphasis on industrial resilience, supply chain repatriation and confronting Chinese economic aggression directly was not protectionist nostalgia.
It was a recognition that the rules-based trading order China pretends to respect is one it has systematically gamed for thirty years. Japanese policymakers understood this concern even when they disagreed with specific tariff decisions. The underlying diagnosis was correct. Events have kept proving it.
The Pacific is now a theater of economic competition whether Washington wants it to be or not. China has made that choice for everyone.
It has used its position in the South China Sea to intimidate smaller neighbors, backed Russia’s war in Ukraine while lecturing the West about sovereignty, and built rare earth dominance into a strategic weapon aimed directly at American manufacturing and defense capacity. It views American alliances not as facts to be respected but as problems to be dissolved.
That is why the U.S.-Japan alliance matters more right now than at any point in recent memory. Not because it is sentimental or traditional. Because it is one of the few economic relationships in the Pacific built on rules both sides actually follow, trust both sides have actually earned, and interests both sides have actually aligned. In a region where China has made dependency its primary foreign policy tool, that is a genuine strategic advantage.
Don’t take it for granted.
James Carter is a policy advisor with America’s Economy First. He previously served as director of the Center for American Prosperity at the America First Policy Institute and as deputy undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Labor where he oversaw international affairs. Jacob Choe is an international strategist specializing in Africa, emerging markets, and critical minerals supply chains. He is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee and a Ben Franklin Fellow.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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