U.S. President Donald Trump struck a trade deal with Japan that lowers tariffs on auto imports and spares Tokyo from punishing new levies on other goods in exchange for a $550 billion package of U.S.-bound investment and loans.

T he U.S. and Japan have reached a trade agreement under which the longtime U.S. will face a 15% tariff—down from a previously threatened 25%—President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday, as Japan’s Prime Minister hailed the move as a “new golden era” in the relationship between the two countries.

He’s a wheeler-dealer, our president, needless to say, and he’s kind of cutting these deals — but he has scared these people, and he’s leveraged American bargaining

Trump believes he can deploy tariffs without tradeoffs or distortions. In reality, each new tariff move creates both.

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US stocks are floating near all-time highs as Wall Street maintains cautious optimism that Washington might ink more trade deals, avoiding a worst-case scenario of extraordinarily high tariffs and enabling the resilient economy to continue chugging along.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that "we'll have a straight, simple tariff of anywhere between 15% and 50%." Hiking the baseline reciprocal tariff rate to 15 percent means a 50 percent higher tax on American manufacturers and consumers than Trump originally promised.

On any list of central bankers dying to get off this crazy thing called 2025, Japan’s Kazuo Ueda deserves a spot at the very top.