April 16, 2025

The latest issue of a major weekly news magazine, “Sunday Mainichi”, carried an interview article in which Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Tamura Tomoko talked about the JCP view on Trump’s tariff measures and the party’s policies including a tax-cut proposal with permanent financial backing, and said, “It’s high time to show our true value.”

Asked by an interviewer, Mainichi Shimbun expert senior writer Kurashige Atsuro, about the JCP view on Trump’s tariffs, Tamura said, “The existing trade system of moving people, goods, and money freely across national borders has caused an extreme wealth concentration, eventually bringing about serious poverty, inequality, and conflicts even within the United States. In some aspects, it can be said that neoliberalism has reached an impasse and breaking point.”

Tamura criticized the Ishiba government for intending to ask for preferential treatment for Japan in tariff talks with the Trump administration. She said, “Now is the time to change Japan’s diplomacy currying favor with the U.S. to a reasonable and frank diplomacy,” and stressed that the Japan-U.S. relationship must be transformed into one structured on an equal footing.

Stating that in order to support people’s livelihoods and the economy under the impact of rising prices and Trump’s tariff policy, Tamura cited the lowering of the consumption tax rate to 5% as the most effective way to accomplish this, and explained that the JCP proposes to fund this measure by such means as revising the preferential taxation for the wealthy and large corporations.