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Pulasan was a tropical storm in the Philippine Sea Tuesday morning Japan time, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said in its latest advisory. The tropical storm had sustained wind speeds of 40 miles per hour. All times on the map are Japan time. By The New York Times Where will it rain? Flash flooding can […] More
As the Biden administration nears a decision to block the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel, the debate over national and economic security is being dwarfed by presidential politics.The Biden administration has spent the past three years promoting a policy of “friend-shoring,” which aims to contain China and Russia by forging closer ties with U.S. allies like Europe and Japan.That policy appears to stop at the state lines of Pennsylvania.As the administration nears a decision to block the proposed acquisition of the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, the traditional debate over national security and economic security is being dwarfed by a more powerful force: presidential politics.Legal experts, Wall Street analysts and economists expressed concern about the precedent that would be set if President Biden uses executive power to block a company from an allied nation from buying an American business. They warn that scuttling the $15 billion transaction would be an extraordinary departure from the nation’s culture of open investment — one that could lead international corporations to reconsider their U.S. investments.“This was a purely political decision, and one that stomps on the Biden administration’s stated focus on building alliances among like-minded countries to advance the economic competition with China,” said Christopher B. Johnstone, a senior adviser and the Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “At the end of the day, it represents pure protectionism that draws no apparent distinction between our friends and our adversaries.”Administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who leads a government panel that is reviewing the steel deal, have espoused the benefits of deepening economic ties with U.S. allies to make supply chains more resilient. Those sentiments are being disregarded in the heat of an election year, where domestic political dynamics take priority.The Biden administration has been under pressure to find a way to justify blocking the Nippon acquisition amid backlash against the deal from the powerful steelworkers’ union. The labor organization believes that Nippon, which has pledged to invest in Pennsylvania factories and preserve jobs, could jeopardize pension agreements and lay off employees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The risk of life-threatening landslides and floods was rapidly increasing in parts of Kyushu Island as the storm lashed it with relentless rain, the authorities warned.The storm unleashed torrential rain, hurricane-force winds and the threat of landslides.Kyodo, via Reuters More
The territorial violation by China is the latest in a series of events amplifying tensions between Beijing and Japan.A Chinese military surveillance plane breached Japanese airspace off the country’s southwestern coast on Monday, marking what Japan’s defense ministry described as the first known incursion by China’s military into its territorial airspace.According to a ministry official, a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft briefly entered Japanese territory near Nagasaki Prefecture around 11:30 a.m. on Monday. In response, Japan’s Self-Defense Force put fighter jets on high alert and issued a warning to the Chinese aircraft.While Chinese planes frequently appear in international airspace around Japan, this incident represents the first confirmed entry of a military aircraft into Japan’s territorial airspace.Over the past two decades, Japan has increasingly faced foreign aircraft encroachments. Last year, Japan’s Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets to intercept foreign planes on 669 occasions — more than three times the number of such responses two decades ago.Of these 669 cases, 479 were in response to Chinese aircraft sightings, according to Japan’s Ministry of Defense.The incursion took place a day before Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, is set to visit Beijing to hold talks with senior Chinese officials. The two sides are expected to discuss tense issues such as the status of Taiwan, the de facto independent island claimed by Beijing, and U.S. export controls of advanced technologies to China.Military analysts suggest that Monday’s airspace violation could be a message from China challenging Japan’s delineation of its territorial border. China asserts control over a large continental shelf in the East China Sea, with its outer edge extending close to the Danjo Islands area, where the Chinese plane was spotted.The airspace violation is the latest in a series of recent events heightening tensions between Japan and China.Last week, a Chinese newscaster deviated from the script on a radio news program by Japan’s public broadcaster, asserting that the Senkaku Islands — controlled by Japan but claimed by China — are Chinese territory.That same day, graffiti was discovered at the Yasukuni Shrine war-commemoration site in Tokyo using Chinese characters that appeared to read “toilet.”Japanese officials summoned Chinese Embassy representatives to a meeting on Monday evening and urged them to prevent future incursions into Japanese airspace, according to a statement from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. More
News outlets said the prime minister would step aside next month, bowing to pressure within his party, which wants to move on from his unpopular leadership. Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, intends to step down next month, bowing to pressure within his party to move on from his unpopular leadership, news outlets reported.Mr. Kishida has informed officials in his administration of his intention not to run in a governing-party election in September, according to Japanese news outlets, including the national broadcaster NHK and Kyodo News. The winner of that election will become the prime minister.Mr. Kishida, who has been prime minister since 2021, will hold a news conference Wednesday morning, according to a spokesperson for his office.This is a developing story. More
The American and British ambassadors to Japan said they would not attend an event to mark the atomic bomb strike in Nagasaki because Israel’s ambassador was excluded.The U.S. and British ambassadors to Japan said on Wednesday they would not attend Nagasaki’s annual peace memorial ceremony this week, which marks the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city, because Israel had not been invited.Among the invitees to the ceremony on Aug. 9, the 79th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack that laid waste to the city, were dignitaries from more than 150 countries and territories. Since 2022, Russia and Belarus have been left off the list because of their invasion of Ukraine.This year, Israel was omitted as well. The American and British ambassadors said the Nagasaki mayor’s decision not to invite Israel wrongly equated the country’s war against Hamas in Gaza with Russia and Belarus’s actions.“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s self-defense is not morally equivalent,” Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, said in an emailed statement.Nagasaki’s mayor, Shiro Suzuki, announced his decision last week, saying it was out of concern over security risks and potential disruption.The move was “not based on political judgment but an intention to conduct the ceremony to console the atomic bomb victims in a peaceful and solemn manner,” Mr. Suzuki said in a news conference.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The Nikkei 225, the benchmark index in Japan, rose on Tuesday after a record decline.Investors in Asia reclaimed a measure of calm on Tuesday, after a day of frenzied selling around the world over concerns about a potential U.S. recession.In Japan, where the losses Monday were largest, stocks bounced higher. The Nikkei 225 index rose 11 percent after plunging 12.4 percent the day before. That was the benchmark index’s biggest one-day point decline, larger than the plummet during the Black Monday crash in October 1987.Stocks in South Korea, which were also down more than 10 percent at one point on Monday, regained about 4 percent.The jolt to stock markets started last week in Japan, where worries about the state of the U.S. economy were compounded by concerns about the effects a rapidly strengthening yen would have on corporate profits.On Friday, a report on American jobs showed a considerable slowdown in hiring, prompting a sell-off in U.S. markets. More widespread panic took hold on Monday over fears that the Federal Reserve may have waited too long to start cutting interest rates, threatening the strength of the U.S. economy. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 3 percent, its sharpest daily decline since September 2022.The Fed is expected to start cutting rates, which are at a more-than-two-decade high, later this year.Conditions in Japan have been complicated by a policy shift in the opposite direction. The Bank of Japan last Wednesday increased its key rate to a quarter point. It was only the central bank’s second rate increase since 2007. After years in which policymakers kept interest rates low to try to boost prices and consumption, inflation has risen to levels at which they felt they could begin raising rates.The prospect of higher rates caused the yen to strengthen, a trend that could be good for Japan’s economy over the longer term but will be a drag on corporate profits, especially for big companies that rely on selling abroad. The currency’s rise spooked investors, some of whom feared a stronger yen would spell the end of a more-than-yearlong rally in Japanese stocks that had been driven by a weakened currency.A stronger yen also undercut some global investments made when the currency was cheaper, acting as a catalyst to wider selling across markets already nervous that stock prices had risen too high, too quickly. A popular trade among some investors involved borrowing in yen, and then investing it in markets like the U.S. But as the strength of the dollar this year began to ebb, profits from that trade also started to reverse course.The yen weakened on Tuesday, trading at around 145 to the dollar, compared with 141 the previous day.While the chain reaction of a strengthening Japanese currency and declining stocks seems to have calmed, analysts expect large market fluctuations to carry forward until there is more clarity about the direction of the economy in the United States.Joe Rennison More
The two governments said the moves were a response to growing aggression by China, whose rapid military buildup has many leaders worried.The top diplomatic and defense officials from the United States and Japan announced on Sunday that their nations would take concrete steps to bolster their military alliance because of the growing threat from China in the region.Those steps include establishing joint forces that would answer to the American commander in the Indo-Pacific, according to a statement issued by the two governments’ top officials and the committee that they oversaw. They also call for increasing co-production of air-to-air missiles and air defense interceptor missiles.The statement framed these changes in the alliance relationship mainly as a response to aggressive moves by China in East Asia. The statement focused on China’s actions in the East China Sea, South China Sea and beyond while also mentioning hostile activity by Russia and North Korea.The governments reaffirmed the importance of the mutual-defense clause in their treaty because of the “increasingly severe security environment caused by recent moves of regional actors,” they said.One of the top issues cited was the East China Sea, which Japan and China both claim part of. The American and Japanese senior officials said their governments reiterated their strong opposition to China’s “intensifying attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion.”The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, and the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, were in Tokyo on Sunday to meet with their Japanese counterparts in what is commonly called a 2+2 dialogue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
