Trump list confounds Japan

In Japan this week, President Donald Trump ticked off a list of multibillion-dollar American investment plans by Japanese firms that he attributed to his trade policies.

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After the president departed Wednesday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, officials in Japan were left scrambling to clarify.

On multiple occasions during his time in Tokyo, Trump said Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp had committed to him that it would spend $10 billion building auto plants “throughout the United States.” He repeated the claim at least twice in South Korea on Wednesday.

In response, Hiroyuki Ueda, a Toyota executive, said the company had not announced specific new plans for a $10 billion investment.

During the first Trump administration, Toyota deployed approximately $10 billion in its US operations.

And in meetings with government officials before Trump’s arrival this week, Toyota conveyed that “our current intention is to proceed at a scale roughly equal to what we did under the previous Trump administration, or under Mr Biden in between,” Mr Ueda said.

“T suspect that is how the figure of around $10 billion may have emerged,” he said.