On July 22, Ryosei Akazawa, then Japan’s minister in charge of tariff negotiations with the United States, was sitting across from President Trump in the Oval Office. Mr. Trump, deploying a familiar negotiating style, began crossing out numbers on a placemat-size visual aid. After eight trips to Washington, Mr. Akazawa had worked out the outline of a plan with Mr. Trump’s trade officials. But in the final meeting, the president upped the ante. Mr. Akazawa went along with the new demands. Japan walked away with lower-than-threatened tariffs.

Japan's manufacturing sector contracted in October at the fastest pace in 19 months due to a sharper decline in new orders, a private-sector survey showed on Friday, Reuters reported. The S&P Global flash Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 48.3 in October from a final reading of 48.5 in September, hitting the lowest since March 2024. It has remained below the 50.0 threshold that separates growth from contraction for four straight months.

Japan’s exports rebounded in September, snapping a four-month run of declines despite U.S. tariffs in a positive sign for the economy, but one that is unlikely to dispel concerns about the longer-term impact of trade policy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Outbound shipments rose 4.2% from a year earlier last month, bouncing back from August’s 0.1% decline, finance ministry data showed Wednesday. Still, the September print undershot the 5.7% rise expected in a poll of economists by data provider FactSet.

A plan to cull the smallest listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is spurring a record number of buyouts of young companies in Japan, reflecting Tokyo’s push to create more billion-dollar startups to better match the country’s global standing in scientific research, the Japan Times reported. Regulators are ratcheting up pressure on startups to gain more scale before debuting on the stock market, warning that the TSE will seek to delist companies that fail to reach a market value of at least ¥10 billion ($66 million) within five years of going public, starting 2030.

Bank of Japan board member Hajime Takata said the time is ripe for raising the bank’s policy interest rate, looking past political instability to reiterate his conviction after he dissented from a decision to hold policy steady last month, the Japan Times reported. "I believe that now is a prime opportunity to raise the policy interest rate,” Takata said Monday in a speech to local business leaders in Hiroshima.

Japan is poised to rewrite the rules of crypto oversight, moving to curb crypto insider trading as part of a broader push to bring digital markets into its orbit, Decrypt.com reported. The country's Financial Services Agency plans to empower its market watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, to police illicit crypto trades, in a shift that could reshape global standards for market integrity. The framework is slated to be finalized this year and submitted to parliament by 2026.

Japan's three largest banks, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group will jointly issue "stablecoins", digital currencies pegged to the value of real-world currencies, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday.

The number of corporate bankruptcies involving liabilities of ¥10 million or more in Japan in the April-September period has hit the highest level in 12 years, partly due to labor shortages, Tokyo Shoko Research said on Wednesday, the Japan Times reported. In the first half of fiscal 2025, which began in April, business failures rose 1.5% from a year earlier to 5,172, up for the fourth consecutive year. The figure was close to the 5,505 recorded in the same period of fiscal 2013.

The Bank of Japan should be cautious about raising interest rates again as the economy is still fragile, said Etsuro Honda, a close economic adviser to Sanae Takaichi, who is likely to become the country's next prime minister, Reuters reported. "Japan is at a delicate stage right now, where the long-standing deflationary mindset is gradually giving way to a more positive inflationary outlook," Etsuro Honda, who advises Takaichi on economic policy, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

Household spending rose for a fourth month in Japan, showing resilience amid persistent inflation as the central bank continues to mull the timing of its next interest rate hike, Bloomberg News reported. Outlays by households adjusted for inflation gained 2.3% from a year ago in August, led by spending on transport and entertainment, the internal affairs ministry reported Tuesday. The result beat the median economist estimate of a 1.2% increase.