By Vijay Jayaraj
The U.S. and Japan are shedding the paralysis of irrational climate policies with a strategic pact covering rare-earth minerals, critical components for semiconductors and next-generation nuclear reactors.
Forged through the leadership of two no-nonsense politicians – President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi – the clear-eyed agreement abandons more than a decade of energy uncertainty that was marked by unpredictable supply chains, unrealistic net-zero pledges and overreliance on unreliable wind and solar energy. This rightly places energy and industrial strategy at the heart of protecting national sovereignty.
Facing the weaponization of supply chains by Beijing, which controls over 90% of processed rare earths, America’s deal with Japan makes priorities of access to materials and technology, strategic resilience and economic growth and leverages an existing $550 billion investment package between the two countries.
According to a White House fact sheet, Japan and various Japanese companies will invest up to $332 billion in U.S. energy infrastructure, including nuclear reactors, plus up to $50 billion in power equipment through deals involving both U.S. and Japanese companies. Japan reportedly is to have increased access to U.S. markets for technology sales and favorable tariff treatment.
These investments are not for more bird-slicing wind turbines or desert-smothering solar panels, but for practical, reliable electric-generating capability.
The U.S. is to spend $75 billion on data-center infrastructure from three Japanese companies: Mitsubishi Electric, for supply power station systems and equipment; TDK Corp., advanced electronic power components; and Fujikura, Ltd., optical fiber cables.
The U.S.-Japan agreement also includes a multi-year deal valued at over $100 million between Global Coal Sales Group and Tohoku Electric Power for American thermal coal. This is a rational decision by an advanced industrial nation to secure affordable, reliable electricity for its people. Coal remains an indispensable energy source for nations that refuse to sacrifice economic growth at the altar of “decarbonization” dogma.
The deal calls for a Japanese investment of up to $3 billion to construct an ammonia and urea fertilizer manufacturing facility in the United States and another $2 billion to construct a copper smelting and refining plant in the American West.
On the other side of the Pacific, Japan will bolster energy supplies by importing 66 million metric tons of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) each year, making it the second-largest LNG buyer after China.
Still, Japan would be well served to add further to provisions of the deal – such as JERA Co.’s $1.5 billion stake in natural gas assets in Louisiana’s Haynesville shale deposits and Tokyo Gas’s purchase of Alaska LNG – which help to replace strategically risky Russian supplies that account for 9% of Japan’s gas needs.
As for nuclear power, Japan’s political cowardice following the Fukushima disaster in 2011 has left it with only 14 of the country’s 54 pre-accident nuclear reactors restarted. Japan needs to exorcise the Fukushima ghosts that have frozen policymakers for 14 years and reclaim its edge in a field now dominated by China, France, South Korea and Russia.
Fortunately for Japan and others, America’s Trump administration has bulldozed a path for vigorous development of resources by ditching the Paris Accord’s chains and axing funds for global climate polices that enforce energy poverty.
The U.S.-Japanese framework hammers home strategic resilience through partnerships with major firms like Mitsubishi and Toshiba embedding in American projects, engendering employment and trade and defying minimalist “green” delusions.
Both powers now stand armored against disruptions, their economies roaring on a bedrock of hydrocarbons and atomic might, proving that real strength comes from embracing what works, not cowering before fabricated crises.
What Washington and Tokyo have accomplished is more than a trade agreement. It is a declaration of independence from the climate catastrophism that has paralyzed rational policymaking for a generation. Other nations will follow. The tide is turning. Energy realism is ascendant.
This commentary was first published by Real Clear Markets on November 17, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
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End of the beginning?
This all makes imminent sense. On the far horizon are the end of fossil fuels and the end of the present Holocene interglacial. It may be centuries, but it’s not forever, and may even start sooner than a century. The only known technology to meet this with an adequate supply of energy is nuclear power and vastly increased power storage and infrastructure. This agreement is a start. We will certainly need a lot more CO2 in the air to grow enough food in the warm band around the equator to feed everyone.
The “end of fossil fuels” is on a very distant horizon. For example, Scotland alone has coal that would last for over 300 years if only we were allowed to dig it up and use it.
That’s a fair amount of energy if needed.
This article offers a breath of fresh air after decades of stifling “climate policy”. May other countries soon follow the US and Japan in recognizing the damage of the misguided “net zero” policies still afflicting most, including the dogma-inhibited Canadian government.
Looking forward to the day when Honda will make a SMR the size of a wheelbarrow.
I find it amazing that sensibility has taken so long to finally emerge from under the hype and propaganda of elitists. It should have been obvious to anyone with a scintilla of intelligence that the whole climate scare was a scam.
How could the answer to global cooling in the 70’s and global warming in the 80’s be more government control, regulations, and mandates? Any rational person would see this as a power grab by elitists trying to bring back serfdom to the masses.
The elitist’s love affair with communist ideology, with them in charge of the party, should be a big red flag. Socialism and communism have never worked well for the benefit of the general population and have led to millions of deaths along with despair for the majority.
Capitalism and individual rights, including property ownership, lead to prosperity for the whole of society. A country should have as many supply lines contained within it’s own borders as possible with a diverse network of foreign suppliers for items not available in the interior.
Unfortunately it was our huge capitalist enterprises that wanted cheap labor that gave us this problem with China.
The biggest problem was with taxes and regulations. Labor was typically around 10% of manufacturing cost.
Industries first headed to the southern states, then to Mexico, then to China and other asian countries due to cheaper regulations and taxes. Cheaper labor was just an added bonus to the bottom line. Unfortunately, the lower production costs were not passed on to the consumers.
Sure, but there’s a long history of wanting cheap labor in America- hence, slavery- America’s primal sin.
America was a consumer of slaves, not a creator or manufacturer.
That was down to the African and Arab tribes.
Blaming America for its use of slaves as the “primal sin” is like all those petroleum consumers that blame Exxon et al for providing the fuels the protestors themselves greedily consumed.
“The devil made me do it” is the sorriest defense ever put forth by any “sinners”.
“Unfortunately, the lower production costs were not passed on to the consumers.”
The lower production costs certainly seem to be passed on to Australian consumers. A few years ago I bought a waterproof sports watch at Kmart, priced at just A$15, which is about 10 US dollars. It’s still working.
The watch was a replacement for a previous Chinese watch I had bought for only A$13 a few decades earlier, which eventually needed a battery replacement. However, replacing the battery would have been more expensive than the cost of a new watch, so it made sense to buy another Chinese-made watch, at Kmart.
My current watch shows the day and the date in large numbers and letters so I can clearly read them without wearing glasses, and has a button which illuminates the screen so I can see the information in the dark.
There are many Chinese products in Australia which are excellent value. I expect Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles will eventually cost no more than an ICE vehicle, and perhaps less, with extended range, faster charging, and greater safety from spontaneous combustion.
You still have Kmarts?
Eventually, all low level labor will be automated. Any country can and will lower the labor cost with automation. It is always desirable to keep supply lines close to home.
I would not choose any electric vehicle, especially Chinese made, until there is a viable replacement for lithium in batteries.
Minimum wage escalation, although of benefit to the lowest economic strata, was a significant factor.
Many industries, such as autos, left when its labor force was way better paid than minimum wage. I don’t blame the auto makers when these already well paid workers demanded ever more.
“Of benefit to the lowest economic strata” only applied to those who did not lose their jobs due to the wage increases, and not to those whose costs went up for the services supplied by the higher-paid workers.
Minimum wage escalation has NOT helped those in the “lowest economic strata” at all. Its origins were in fact racist (as in low skilled black workers were taking jobs from whites by working for lower wages – the establishment of a “minimum wage” meant employers would only pay the “minimum” to higher skilled, usually white, workers).
The checkered past of the “minimum wage” aside, all raising the minimum wage does is increase unemployment for those in the “lowest economic strata.” See California’s recent stupidity in that regard.
Recent college grads are whining about trouble finding a job. Meanwhile, America’s east and south Asian friendly nations are going to be investing mountains of money in America. Those grads should be chasing those new investments. But the jobs will be the type demanding high productivity, not groovy woke type jobs.
Science, engineering, and math in this country needs a rebirth.
But, but…. those studies are hard work- unlike lib arts and social sciences. 🙂
but we aspire to the woke ideology of 2
+2=5
“2 +2=5”
Wrong, it’s 22, you have to account for inflation.
After Fukushima, MSM panicked the Japanese public and politicians to abandon nuclear power. SNP will make the production of automobiles and other goods more accessible
The Scottish National Party will arrange something that will work ?????
These deals are impressive in scale and range. There must be a huge amount of coordinated effort to get all this together.
Trump is actually a closet globalist with US at the centre of the economic world. I know of no other leader who has so much reach and influence. He is now at the head of the global economy and may edge out China as the global economic powerhouse.
UN is running a circus in Belem while Trump is making deals across the globe.
One of my first post-grad jobs in 1968-70 was as a soil nutrition research chemist for a brand new fertilizer production plant, then named Austral-Pacific Fertilizers. Location was Gibson Island, near the mouth of the Brisbane River. Founding financiers were W.G. Grace and Dow Chemical Company from USA. Production was about 550,000 tonnes of urea a year, made from natural gas passed over catalysts and nitrogen from the air.
The plant closed in 2022 because of price rises for natural gas.
These days, I suspect that very few people are aware of the importance of fertilizers in agriculture, particularly those based on Nitrogen. The 3 major nutrients for plant growth are NPK for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium. The P and K are mined from natural deposits but the N has to be manufactured.
Those who object to natural gas for making N fertilizer and to mining in general for P and K have no idea of alternative ways to help feed the world.
Their minds have big vacant spaces where good ideas should live.
Geoff S
More good news.