{"id":404953,"date":"2025-09-07T10:01:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T10:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/404953\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T10:01:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T10:01:23","slug":"japans-pm-shigeru-ishiba-resigns-weeks-after-election-debacle-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/404953\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s PM Shigeru Ishiba resigns weeks after election debacle | Politics News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Calls for his resignation had grown since his Liberal Democratic Party suffered a crushing loss in July.<\/p>\n

Published On 7 Sep 20257 Sep 2025<\/p>\n

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced his resignation as president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), just weeks after its ruling coalition suffered a historic defeat in a July election.<\/p>\n

Ishiba\u2019s decision to step down on Sunday comes after he initially resisted calls from within his party to resign over the electoral loss, saying he wanted to make sure that a tariff deal<\/a> struck with the United States was appropriately implemented.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Japan having signed the trade agreement and the [US] president having signed the executive order, we have passed a key hurdle,\u201d Ishiba said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to pass the baton to the next generation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s resignation deepens the political uncertainty facing the world\u2019s fourth-largest economy.<\/p>\n

After assuming his role last October, the 68-year-old politician saw electoral defeats<\/a> wipe out his coalition\u2019s majority in both houses of parliament.<\/p>\n

The losses, stoked by voters\u2019 concerns about the rising cost of living, made it more difficult for Ishiba\u2019s government to implement its policy objectives.<\/p>\n

Amid the country\u2019s growing political instability, Ishiba was urged to resign by mostly right-wing opponents within his party, who wanted him to take responsibility for the results of July\u2019s House of Councillors election.<\/p>\n

Reports suggested that Japan\u2019s agricultural minister and a former prime minister met Ishiba on Saturday evening to persuade him to step aside.<\/p>\n

After announcing his resignation at a news conference on Sunday, Ishiba said he would begin the process to find his replacement.<\/p>\n

His potential successors include the conservative Sanae Takaichi, who narrowly lost to Ishiba in last year\u2019s LDP run-off election, and Shinjiro Koizumi, the current farming minister whose family has long been involved in Japanese politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the political pressure mounting on Ishiba after the LDP\u2019s repeated election losses, his resignation was inevitable,\u201d noted Kazutaka Maeda, an economist at Meiji Yasuda Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs for potential successors, Koizumi and Takaichi are seen as the most likely candidates. While Koizumi is not expected to bring major changes, Takaichi\u2019s stance on expansionary fiscal policy and her cautious approach to interest rate hikes could draw scrutiny from financial markets,\u201d Maeda added.<\/p>\n

Ishiba\u2019s resignation comes just days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to slash tariffs on Japanese car imports from 27.5 percent to 15 percent, formalising an earlier agreement announced in July.<\/p>\n

Under its terms, a 15 percent levy will be imposed against most Japanese exports to the US.<\/p>\n

However, speaking on Saturday, Tokyo\u2019s top tariff negotiator said the broad trade agreement is \u201cnot settled\u201d yet, as US presidential orders on pharmaceutical and semiconductor tariffs have not been issued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calls for his resignation had grown since his Liberal Democratic Party suffered a crushing loss in July. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[11410,2122,12,285,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-404953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-japan","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115162440239847172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}