My off-hand joke that the ongoing trade negotiations between Japan and the United States are going to result in people importing a bunch of Ford F-150 Raptors doesn’t seem as much of a joke this morning. While they may not be Raptors, there’s a non-zero chance that a fleet of F-150s is headed to Tokyo.
The Morning Dump is yet again about trade, because President Trump is doing a tour through Asia, trying to close a lot of deals that might bring investment to the United States. Much of this conversation centers on how much of that investment will be cash and where it might go, but at least a portion might go to America’s best-selling truck.
Ford isn’t going to be the only potential exporter, as Nissan looks to send some of its locally-produced vehicles to Japan as an offset for overcapacity. Fellow Japanese automaker Toyota is in much better shape, so its biggest issue seems to be keeping up with demand in the United States.
It’s not just Japanese automakers facing trade conundrums. Both Stellantis and GM are dealing with confusing trade woes, specifically with Canada.
The F-150 Will Be Big In Japan
F150 Raptor, a tad large for parking in Japan
byu/nnavenn injapanpics
As you can see in the photo above from Reddit, someone has already imported at least one F-150 Raptor into Japan. Respect.
I made the point a couple of weeks ago that it’s possible the splitting of the car market further into America/Canada and Everywhere Else was likely to continue because of tariffs. My point was that we already share a lot of platforms and cars, but one of our biggest distinguishing bodystyles (big trucks) isn’t necessarily a good fit for the rest of the globe.
There’s probably no future where Middle Eastern countries aren’t excited about importing Suburbans, but the rest of the world might not be into American cars at any scale (I mean, someone in Japan is definitely going to import an F-150 Raptor and it’s going to be awesome).
So, yeah, it turns out someone did import one, and it is, indeed, awesome.
This ability to sell cars in Japan has been a huge sticking point for the Trump White House, which does not like the imbalance in car production between the two countries. Partially because of the instability around trade (though also because of much deeper and more local issues), Japan has a new Prime Minister in the form of Abe acolyte Sanae Takaichi.
One of President Trump’s claims has been with the idea that Japanese regulators throw bowling balls at American cars to disqualify them from being sold there. This is not true, though there are some legitimate barriers to American companies selling cars there successfully.
What better way to resolve the issue ahead of a pivotal trade meeting than for Takaichi to, you know, just buy a bunch of F-150s? According to the Associated Press, that’s exactly what might happen:
One key to this strategy might lie in an idea floated by Japan’s government to buy a fleet of Ford F-150 trucks, a meaningful gesture that may also be impractical given the narrow streets in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
It’s an early diplomatic test for Takaichi, the first woman to lead Japan. She took office only last week, and has a tenuous coalition backing her.
Trump instantly bought into the idea of Ford trucks as he flew to Asia aboard Air Force One.
“She has good taste,” Trump told reporters. “That’s a hot truck.”
No lies detected, it is a pretty hot truck. Additionally, it’s not like there are no big trucks anywhere in Japan. It’s entirely possible for someone to drive a regular F-150 in Tokyo. If films have taught me anything, it’s that if there’s abundant enough room in Shibuya to hella drift an RX-7, then you can normally drive a SuperCrew or whatever.
Nissan Might Send Some U.S.-Built Pathfinders And Muranos To Japan
While the F-150 purchase would just be a gesture, it’s possible that Japanese consumers could purchase both the U.S.-built Murano and Pathfinder.
It would be a curious journey for the Pathfinder in particular, which went from a Japanese-built truck for Japan and global markets, to an American-built soft crossover you can’t even buy in Japan (I think the Rogue is the biggest SUV you can buy there currently, but it’s called the X-Trail). Now it might be an America-built truck for Japan.
From Automotive News, this is a potential future for the vehicle, though not without issues:
A Nissan executive familiar with the move confirmed both vehicles are candidates.
But the company must first conduct feasibility studies to look at such issues as demand in Japan, the state of regulations surrounding safety certification and the yen-dollar exchange rate, the person said. The dollar is at historical highs, making reverse importing difficult.
Currency rules everything around me, CREAM.
Nissan has had a rough go in the United States, so it’s a convenient way to use that extra capacity, even if it’s mostly just to buy goodwill from the White House.
Toyota Hit A Global Sales Record Thanks To The United States
The country might be on track to become a place where we make more stuff again, but our power currently lies in our ability to buy stuff. That’s why everyone cares (that and because the globe’s manufacturing hub is China, which has its own troubles as a geopolitical partner).
Case in point, Toyota’s lukewarm sales basically everywhere were offset by big sales in the United States.
While Toyota and Lexus brand sales fell slightly in China and Japan in September, they rose more than 14% in the US thanks to strong demand for gas-electric hybrids, which accounted for 42% of total sales during the first half of the fiscal year. Total sales increased 5% during that time, a record for that six-month period.
Legacy brands have been losing ground in China, where domestic manufacturers led by BYD Co. have grown to dominate the world’s largest car market.
Toyota has regained a modicum of stability there, due in part to the popularity of its fully-electric bZ3X and its hybrid models. But a shrinking market back home poses a long-term challenge.
So long as America’s buying power remains strong, other countries will keep paying a lot of attention to our whims.
Canada To Take Away Tariff Breaks From GM And Stellantis
Both GM and Stellantis have planned to move assembly from Canada to the United States to get around tariffs. There are challenges with this, mostly because Canada has instituted reciprocal tariffs.
There was an offset for vehicles produced in Canada, but those don’t work as companies build more south of the border, as Bloomberg explains (via The Detroit News):
That exemption allowed auto companies to continue importing vehicles into Canada without paying tariffs, as long as they kept producing and investing in Canadian factories. But Stellantis will now see its quota of tariff-free vehicles slashed by 50% and GM will face a 24% reduction, according to a government official familiar with the matter, speaking on condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
It’s an escalation of tension between Carney’s government and the automakers, which have been altering their manufacturing plans in response to Trump’s tariffs and changes in demand for electric vehicles.
GM announced this week it’s permanently ending electric van production in Ingersoll, Ontario, casting doubt over the future of that plant, which doesn’t make any other model. Last week, Stellantis halted plans to make the Jeep Compass SUV at a factory near Toronto, putting 3,000 direct jobs at risk. The fate of that facility in Brampton is also unclear.
If we go to war with Canada, can we please just do it in the summer?
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
It’s “Tokyo Drift” by Teriyaki Boyz, which was my generation’s “Golden” by HUNTR/X.
The Big Question
What would be the funniest car to export to Japan?
Top graphic images: Ford, DepositPhotos.com
If I could make the funniest export ever, I’d put a long-bed crew-cab Duramax dually in Hong Kong. Alternatively, I’d export a Mustang GTD to Madagascar.
Stupidest car to import to Japan? The ’75 Caddy limo featured in Shitbox Showdown. Duh.
A Chevrolet Cavalier would be the funniest car to import to Japan. To make it even funnier, badge it as a Toyota: https://www.motor1.com/features/741562/toyota-cavalier-history-and-legacy/
I’d LOVE to meet the Japanese dudes who bought one of those utter crapcans over literally everything else available as a new car in Japan. The mind boggles.
The F-150 is about the best of it’s breed, IMHO. If you need a pickup truck, it’s a damned good pickup truck. It’s certainly going to be a niche need in Japan though.
But I am of the opinion that anyone should be able to personally import anything from anywhere. I reserve the right to think they are an idiot for doing it.
“I’d LOVE to meet the Japanese dudes who bought one of those utter crapcans…”
I can almost guarantee he wears shiny suits, is covered in tattoos and is missing a finger.
Eek. I thought their taste ran more to big black sedans, but Japan is not really my jam.
We could always tell when Yakuza were around:
Because their burgundy Sedan de Villes and red Corvettes were always parked near the pachinko parlors.
In 2016 I was in Turin for work, and someone was driving a RAM 1500 in city traffic, it looked like Bigfoot among all the European city cars. I would imagine it would be similar in Japan. Also I feel like this was a song miss, as Big In Japan would have worked perfectly.
Saw a GMT400 Suburban street parked in Rome a few years ago, historic district 2 blocks or so from Piaza Navaro. Crazy! Also saw a Hellcat Charger in Milan.
Wasn’t that song used last week?
Oh, I don’t know, I was in Italy (again) for work and missed most of the morning dumps due to Tim zones and jetlag.
There are small numbers of big-ass American pickups all over Europe. From US service members personal rides, including ones that got sold off, to handfuls that are quasi-officially imported. There is definitely a cult-following for the things over there. The grass is always greener and all that.
My wife and I went to the Faroe Islands a few years back. Most Faroese roads are one lane with pull offs every so often so a car can pull over to let somebody through going the other direction. Often the road has a sheer cliff on one side. One day while driving along, I saw somebody in a bigass Ram HD truck. It must have been for a farm or something. It must have been a chore to drive that truck there.
I feel like the GMC Hummer EV would be both hilarious to see in Japan, but also a nightmare for the driver and everyone around.
At least the Hummer has 4-wheel steering, so it would be more maneuverable than a lot of other suggestions.
True. I wonder how folks in Japan would respond to seeing the thing crabwalk?
I don’t know what would be funny to export, but it would be awesome to import a JDM F-150 if such a vehicle ever exists. I could see potential hilarity in owning the most ‘Murican vehicle ever, but with everything written in Japanese. I would try to convince people we slipped into an alternate timeline where Japan won WW2.
“It’s “Tokyo Drift” by Teriyaki Boyz, which was my generation’s “Golden” by HUNTR/X.”
This is the funniest thing you’ve ever written. Thanks Hardigree.
That’s what I’m here for.
The Grand Wagoneer will be the equivalent of sending Godzilla
Sending our biggest, least reliable option would baffle them.
The opposite of Kaizen lol
“If we go to war with Canada, can we please just do it in the summer?”
Summer is the time I have to wear a respirator outside because of the Canadian wildfire attack
Send back one of Mercedes’s Kei cars.
How about a Chevy Cavalier, but, get this, we rebadge it as a Toyota.
OR, we could take a Toyota Matrix and sell it in the US as a Pontiac. Then, we’ll take that rebadged Toyota, remove the Pontiac branding, and sell it back as a Toyota.
https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/vehicle_lineage/car/id60000430/index.html
Mom: “but we have a Toyota at home”
.. Toyota at home
Great idea!
First, you’ll need a time machine…
Can’t tell if this is a joke, because it actually happened….
That’s the joke… and I still think it’s one of the funniest exports to Japan. They even spent the money to convert it to RHD.
It succeeded in getting yellow turn signals as part of that conversion.
Sadly, it didn’t filter back to the original.
King Raunch
I know the solution to the Ingersoll plant’s potential closure!
Dig out the old tooling for the Geo Trackers they used to build there, and throw ’em back into production! A perfect car for this day and age.
(I know this will work, because factories are so big, they must never ever throw anything out, and all the tooling must be in some forgotten back room) /s
I am eleven-hundred percent on board with this.
Export the $111K F-450 Platinum 4×4 Duel rear wheel crew cab 8ft box and watch it try to navigate anywhere.
Watching people try to navigate Walmart parkinglots with an F150 is already depressing enough. Why export misery?
Exactly. As if Trump visiting isn’t enough of a punishment?
For the stupidest car to import to Japan, a quick internet search says the Caddy Escalade IQL is the widest passenger vehicle in the US at almost 8 feet wide without mirrors, surprising to me even wider than the hummer ev. The massive battery would be stupid in Japan as well, so I’ll vote for it. I wonder if it would be classified as a bus in Japan?
“our power currently lies in our ability to finance stuff”
FIFY.
Ouch, yeah.
Funniest car to import to Japan? Jason’s Pao. No one would notice it, nor know it ever left the country.
This likely came across funny in your head.
It’s far, far, less funny to say it out loud.
Never in a million years does this have a chance of actually occurring, though. Even Stephen Miller and JD and the alcoholic and all of them wouldn’t go along with that.
It depends on how many elections they want to cancel.
I mean, the guy is 80 years old and has subsisted purely on McDonald’s and steak for the entirety of his life. They can cancel all the elections they want but he’s going to be facing the reaper at some point.
I’m pretty sure their goal is to have changed all the rules enough that by the time the obituary hits the front page, it won’t matter who the “face” of the White House is. It’ll be Russian “elections” that keep the current crop in power indefinitely.
Only took 250 years to do a complete 180 and piss on everything the country was founded on.
I just hope Carney makes good on his promise to diversify our country and progressively cut ties with the US.
Trump pretty obviously has some kind of terminal something which is why they’ve been doing turbo Fascism. FWIW I don’t think there needs to be any foreign interference in our elections, nor do I think they even need to bother rigging anything at this point. They’ve done so much damage after not even a year that it’s going to be take multiple decades to even begin rebuilding.
I agree. As a Canadian, that is not something I’m afraid of
Never in a million years would the US elect a 34-time convicted felon and adjudicated rapist as President. Oh, wait…
Nobody with a modicum of knowledge about United States history would’ve ever made a statement like that lol.
I guess I know nothing about the country I’ve lived in for the last five decades. Both my high school US History teacher and college World History professor must be so disappointed in me.
I grew up in an era when Gary Hart blew his entire presidential campaign when a picture of him next to a yacht named Monkey Business with a hot young blond on his lap went that ages version of viral. It was scandalous that Nancy was Ronnie’s second wife.
It was bad enough that Clinton ruined the institution, but I’m amazed we’ve sunk as far as we have. I still just doesn’t compute.
We’ve been heading down a path of complete fealty to corporate overlords and utter disregard for our people since Reagan and arguably even before.
So then, riddle me this – what happens if the corporate overlords decide to fix their tariff problems simply by annexing Canada?
I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but honestly, it’s not as far fetched as it was 20 years ago.
My bingo card has a lot of checks outside the box, this year.
I texted a photo of a squarebody to a buddy in Canada who works for the government (he loves them), and I joked that he shouldn’t let anyone know I sent it because we’re all supposed to pretend to be mad that Doug Ford got Ronald Reagan to say something mean about Donald Trump.
You just don’t understand n-dimensional chess. The past is future.
I’d say we could go burn down the White House again, but at this rate there may be nothing left to burn.
Just wait till he announces the “big beautiful parking lot” to be located on the front lawn of the White House.
A “fleet” of F-150’s for the government to use to inspect infrastructure is just so amazingly dumb, but whatever it takes to make king baby happy
“If we go to war with Canada, can we please just do it in the summer?”
Not a fun joke.
Not sure if the F-150 is built in Canada/Mexico as well as Kentucky, but if it were; for Japan to import only Candian/Mexican built trucks would be epic.
We really are in the absolute dumbest timeline in the US. Full sized american trucks make absolutely zero sense in Japan, that’s why single-digit imports by citizens is all that happens. The current Administration is such a joke that countries have recognized that all you need to do to get favorable trade terms is make a small investment in whatever nonsense the president is peddling.
It’s genuinely as simple as keeping a toddler or dog happy in the short term. Give it a treat, and it’ll shut up for 5 minutes, rinse and repeat. And for most of these countries, the math is simple, a few 10’s of millions here and there for billions in savings. It was said at the start of the trade war/tariff mess, but it’s even more abundantly clear now; there is no long term plan, there is no cohesion to the strategy. Countries are best off doing whatever they can for short term placation to salvage long-term trade deals.
Hell, it’s why we had dictators and despots their weight into nominating the orange geriatric in chief for a Nobel Peace Prize. We’re basically living in Idiocracy at this point with a side order of kleptocracy.
Japan already has vehicles that fit their society that are just as capable (if not more capable) than an F150. The last thing someone in a Kei car needs is a Raptor pushing them off the road because they need to get to 7 Eleven. American pickups in cities like that are an invasive species.
I’d argue the same for most US cities as well…
I’ll second that, I had a Silverado foisted on me as a rental car years ago in San Antonio, and even there in the urban sprawl it was a pain.
Had a Silverado rental in BC Canada least year. It was massive in the rural areas and obscene in Vancouver. The parking garage at the hotel had 1″ overhead clearance.
Hell, when I drove across Australia in 2019, full-size American trucks just looked too big in any city. Lanes and parking spots seemed smaller. Also, I think the American trucks were left-hand drive.
I bought a 2015 two door, two seat, 8′ flatbed 4wd, 6 speed Diesel Hilux in Perth, which was OK around Perth. Driving in the central business district of Melbourne and Sydney was butt-clenching, I probably did not fart until I was on the airplane. Underground car parks were very tricky.
Do any American car and light truck manufacturers make right hand drive vehicles in the US?
“Do any American car and light truck manufacturers make right hand drive vehicles in the US?”
Why would we?
Rural mail delivery. https://www.dancumminscdjr.com/new-Georgetown-2025-Jeep-Wrangler-Sport+RHD+Right+Hand+Drive-1C4PJXKN4SW648616?srsltid=AfmBOoowxw6AwUUrMFIv8fiVhSbT57FdrUq8v6KhFEE_xaEqOH_qMqYT
You may find the occasional right hand drive wrangler for rural mail delivery
https://www.dancumminscdjr.com/new-Georgetown-2025-Jeep-Wrangler-Sport+RHD+Right+Hand+Drive-1C4PJXKN4SW648616?srsltid=AfmBOoowxw6AwUUrMFIv8fiVhSbT57FdrUq8v6KhFEE_xaEqOH_qMqYT
I don’t think any do now, but, there was actually a RHD Holden Suburban in the GMT400 generation. The dashboards were Horrific.
The Flat Rock, Michigan plant builds RHD Mustangs. Beyond that, I kinda doubt it.
I guess it’s funny, but it’s funny in the way of, like, a court jester hitting himself in the head with a giant rubber mallet while the insane, gout-ridden, pedophile, smooth-brained king claps like a toddler and drools over his mutton.
The difference is the “king” in this case did not get plopped into that position solely by accident of birth. He was put there by the people…TWICE.
True, but he was also given effectively unlimited power by the members of our Supreme Court, none of whom any of us got a chance to vote for.
Japan – Suburban