The U.S. and Japan emphasized that security ties remain robust — despite rising concerns about the alliance’s durability and looming tariffs under President Donald Trump — as the countries’ defense chiefs held their first in-person talks Sunday in Tokyo.
Saying that “phase one” of a plan to upgrade the U.S. military’s command in the country was underway, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described Japan as an “indispensable partner” in confronting China and sought to dispel lingering unease in Tokyo over Trump’s penchant for a transactional approach when dealing with allies.
"President Trump has also made it very clear, and we reiterate, we are going to put America first,” Hegseth said following his meeting with Defense Minister Gen Nakatani. “But ‘America First’ does not mean America alone.”
Trump and his picks for key administration posts have unnerved Tokyo with decisions to slap Japan with tariffs and comments that it should pay more for hosting U.S. troops while boosting its own defense spending.
Asked if he had broached the issue of cost-sharing or defense spending with Nakatani, Hegseth said that while the two sides "did not talk specific numbers," he believed Japan would "make the correct determination of what capabilities are needed" — a hint that the Trump administration could ask Tokyo to instead purchase more U.S. weapons.
"They have been a model ally and we have no doubt that will continue,” he said. “But we also both recognize everybody needs to do more."
Nakatani, for his part, said he had told Hegseth that military spending should be "implemented based on Japan's own judgment” and that “what matters most is the content” of budgets, not the final figures.
The Japanese defense chief also said he had “gained the U.S. side’s understanding” after explaining that Tokyo “has continuously been working on a drastic strengthening” of its defense capabilities.
While those issues could slow growing momentum for improved defense ties further down the road, Hegseth used Sunday’s meeting to highlight a key unifying factor for the allies: their mutual desire to counter China's increasingly assertive military stance in the region.
“America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the communist Chinese,” Hegseth told a news conference following the talks.
The U.S. “is committed to sustaining robust, ready and credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait,” he said, noting that Japan “would be on the front lines of any contingency we might face in the western Pacific.”
The Chinese military has been increasingly active near Japan in recent years — sometimes even entering territorial waters and airspace. Last year, a Chinese military plane entered Japanese airspace for the first time and one of the Asian powerhouse’s navy survey ships entered Japanese territorial waters just days later.
But Beijing’s moves near self-ruled Taiwan — which China views as a renegade province that must be unified with the mainland, by force if necessary — has been one of Japan’s top concerns. Tokyo has repeatedly said that any move on the island would also represent an existential crisis for Japan.
The U.S. and Japan have found common cause in seeking to rein in China, a stance that has pushed forward long-sought shifts in defense policy in both Washington and Tokyo.
One crucial change for the alliance will be the planned expansion of U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ). Last July, then-President Joe Biden announced a major revamp of the U.S. military command in Japan to deepen coordination with the Self-Defense Forces.
Hegseth said that the Pentagon “has started phase one” of upgrading USFJ “to a joint force headquarters,” which he said would improve the U.S. military’s ability to coordinate operations with Japan’s own permanent Joint Operations Command, known colloquially as JJOC, which was established last week.
Japanese defense officials said Nakatani briefed Hegseth on the new command, which will centrally oversee the SDF’s three branches, allowing for the smoother integration of operations across domains to prepare for and respond to possible emergencies.
The USFJ upgrade will eventually place a combined operational commander in Japan, who will be a counterpart of the JJOC head. For the time being, however, the JJOC counterpart will remain the head of the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii — more than 6,000 kilometers away.
Hegseth’s assurances over the upgrade came just days after U.S. and local media reports said the plan could be totally halted or watered down.
Boosting the two countries’ military presence in Japan's far-flung Nansei Islands and improving the militaries’ responsiveness through “more sophisticated and realistic bilateral training and exercises,” as well as deeper defense equipment and technical cooperation, were also discussed during the talks, according to Nakatani.
The Japanese defense minister said that the two sides would boost the “codevelopment, coproduction and co-sustainment” of defense equipment, with a focus on maintaining a stable supply of missiles.
Under the allies’ Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition and Sustainment (DICAS) forum, a group created last year to identify areas for closer industrial cooperation, Nakatani said Japan would “expedite efforts” to start coproduction of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM), while also conveying Tokyo’s intention to pursue the possibility of coproducing SM-6 surface-to-air missiles.
But the bright spots for the alliance that emerged from Sunday’s meeting risk being overshadowed by Trump’s announcement Wednesday that 25% tariffs on all automobile and auto part imports would be imposed from midnight on April 3.
Japan is considering “all possible options” in response, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has said, but a refusal by the Trump administration to exempt Tokyo from this measure and other tariffs has pushed the top U.S. ally in Asia into crisis mode.
The tough measures also come after Trump complained earlier this month that the U.S.-Japan security alliance was unfair.
"I love Japan. We have a great relationship with Japan, but we have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don't have to protect us," he said at the time. Japanese officials have disputed this characterization.
Under the bilateral security treaty, more than 50,000 U.S. troops are based in Japan, which is also home to the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet. The U.S. presence has grown increasingly important to Washington and Tokyo, analysts say, amid not only Chinese military assertiveness but North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling and Russian moves in the region.
But turbulence could still hit the U.S.-Japan relationship going forward — despite Hegseth's pronouncements — as two key Trump administration nominees have taken aim at Japan's defense budget and its spending for American troops in the country.
Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee to be the Pentagon's top policy official, said earlier this month that Japan — which is aiming to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense by fiscal 2027 — must boost its defense budget even further, to “at least 3% of GDP on defense as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s pick to be the next ambassador to Japan, George Glass, said this month that he will "undoubtedly" need to press Japan to contribute more money for hosting U.S. troops, while also having “tough conversations” about the allies’ economic relationship.
Sunday’s defense talks came a day after Hegseth and Nakatani visited Ioto, the far-flung Japanese island known widely as Iwo Jima, for an event honoring those who died in bloody fighting there 80 years ago during World War II.
Hegseth, who is on the final leg of his first trip to Asia as defense chief after stops in Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines, was also continuing to grapple with a growing scandal over leaked details about U.S. military strikes on Yemen earlier this month. The U.S. defense chief has been under fire for sharing the sensitive details over a commercial messaging app in which Trump's national security adviser mistakenly added a journalist to a group chat.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hegseth had brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, fueling more criticism of his fitness for the defense secretary post.
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