“Now that a conclusion has been reached in the negotiations concerning the US tariff measures, I believe this is precisely the appropriate time”, Ishiba said, referring to a deal signed last week to ease tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump on Japanese cars and other exports.<\/p>\n
Until Sunday, he had resisted calls to resign, saying it was his responsibility to settle the dispute with Washington before stepping down. <\/p>\n
“I have strongly believed that negotiations concerning the US tariff measures, which could be described as a national crisis, must be brought to a conclusion under our administration’s responsibility,” he said. <\/p>\n
The 68-year-old said he would continue his responsibilities “to the people” until a new prime minister was selected. <\/p>\n
Ishiba, who took office in October 2024 promising to tackle rising prices, struggled to inspire confidence as the country faced economic headwinds, a cost-of-living crisis and fractious politics with the US. <\/p>\n
Inflation, particularly the doubling of rice prices in the last year, was politically damaging. <\/p>\n
Public support further slid after a series of controversies, including criticism of his decision to appoint only two women to his cabinet and handing out expensive gifts to party members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Now that a conclusion has been reached in the negotiations concerning the US tariff measures, I believe this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-405219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115163030131605251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405219","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=405219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}