Handshake deal between Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba and President Trump (Wall Street Journal photo)
Jul 23, 2025
WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday evening, President Donald Trump announced the freshly inked trade agreement with Japan that would allow for additional duty-free sales of U.S. rice. USA Rice supports Trump’s major milestone in U.S.-Japan agricultural trade relations and creating new opportunities for U.S. rice exports. The agreement follows just a few short months of negotiation stemming from the Liberation Day announcement on April 2, 2025.
“With this trade deal, President Trump has further solidified the importance of Japan as a market for high-quality U.S. rice,” said USA Rice President & CEO Peter Bachmann. “Japan is consistently among our top export markets in terms of both value and volume, but this will be the first opportunity since the 1990s to further that market access. We thank the President for continuing to prioritize additional rice market access throughout the negotiating process and we look forward to working with our Japanese counterparts on the implementation of the agreement.”
Japan has long been a vital market for U.S. rice exporters, thanks to frameworks first established under the Uruguay Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. That agreement allowed Japan to delay full tariffication in exchange for increasing market access commitments.
In 1999, Japan opted to implement tariffication ahead of schedule, creating a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system for imported rice. As a result, Japan was allowed to reduce its minimum access commitment to 682,200 metric tons (MT) of milled rice annually.
From 1999 to 2024, Japan imported an annual average of 326,828 MT of U.S. rice, valued at approximately $222.7 million per year (not adjusted for inflation). U.S. rice that enters Japan outside the TRQ system faces a tariff of 341 yen per kilogram, which in U.S. dollars is roughly $2.33 per kg or $2,330 per MT.
Given a domestic shortage and high prices of rice in the 2024/2025 Japan Fiscal Year (April-March), Japan’s private sector imported the full 100,000 MT of duty-free milled rice for the first time in nearly a decade, of which U.S. rice made up nearly 60 percent. In addition, the U.S. rice industry estimates that more than 50,000 MT of U.S. milled rice was exported to Japan’s private sector outside of the quota and paid the 341 yen per kg tariff.
This new agreement opens the door to strengthen the long-standing rice-trading relationship between the United States and Japan and comes just ahead of the annual technical meeting between the U.S. rice industry and Japanese importers.
“USA Rice will continue to engage with our counterparts in Japan to ensure successful implementation of the agreement and to maximize opportunities for U.S. rice farmers and exporters,” said Bachmann.