No time to drift: Trump, China, and the urgency of a stronger EU-Japan alignment

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has reignited deep anxiety in both Tokyo and Brussels. If the first Trump administration created tremors in alliance politics, his second is already hitting like an earthquake.

Security, of course, is the core concern. Japan remains heavily reliant on the United States security umbrella, with effectively no plan B in the Indo-Pacific. Trump’s recent dismissal of the security alliance as one-sided only deepened Tokyo’s unease. The EU’s security, while still dependent on US commitments, particularly through NATO, has a bit more flexibility. The war in Ukraine has jolted Europe into confronting this dependency, but operationalising this ambition remains an ongoing struggle.

Moreover, the possibility of a transactional US-China “sectoral deal”—in which Washington and Beijing strike limited agreements on trade, technology or security—as speculated by Japanese analysts poses serious risks for Japan and Europe alike. It could sideline democratic allies in favour of short-term geopolitical gains. For Japan, it recalls the trauma of Nixon’s  rapprochement with Beijing, which came at Tokyo’s strategic expense. For Europe, it risks marginalisation as global rules would be shaped without its input, undermining its efforts to build coherent European defence architecture.

Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements—and reversals—have rattled both Europe and Japan. After slapping 25% tariffs on foreign steel, aluminium and automobiles in March, threatening both European and Japanese automakers, he doubled down in April with broader tariffs of 20% on the EU and 24% on Japan. But on 9 April, Trump abruptly scaled back, keeping full tariffs only on China and reducing the rate to 10% for all other countries for a 90-day period. Such volatility in Washington makes transatlantic and transpacific coordination on trade and security even more urgent. Japan is dispatching a team to Washington for negotiations, while the EU initially voted for retaliatory tariffs—only to pause them following Trump’s reversal.

Despite different approaches, Brussels and Tokyo now face the dilemma of navigating an increasingly unpredictable Washington. These mounting threats of geopolitical fragmentation, technological coercion, and alliance uncertainty reinforces the need for Europe and Japan to not only align more closely but to do so publicly, visibly, and with political determination.

The EU and Japan already maintain a strategic partnership, anchored in shared values, mutual economic interests, and a commitment to a rules-based international order. The Strategic Partnership Agreement and the Economic Partnership Agreement have formed the backbone of this relationship, enabling a wide array of cooperation. However, they are no longer sufficient on their own.

What is needed now is not the invention of new structures but enhancement of existing ones, elevating them to a new level of urgency and operational success. The real case for strategic alignment in 2025 is not about initiating collaboration from scratch; it’s about unlocking dormant areas of cooperation and accelerating existing initiatives to the next level. The existing EU-Japan partnership must now hold firm and defend the values it was built on.

The EU-Japan advantage

Japan and the EU already collaborate on digital governance, climate policy and infrastructure connectivity, but defence cooperation remains underdeveloped. The ongoing joint fighter jet project is promising, but hampered by gaps in defence procurement frameworks and technology interoperability. Japan’s rapidly evolving security posture—underscored by a rising defence budget and acquisition of counterstrike capabilities—creates a window of opportunity for deeper EU-Japan defence and industrial ties. Germany’s move to exclude defence spending from its debt brake signals a similar readiness to scale up. Both actors face shared needs in long-range strike systems, cybersecurity, and space-based assets. Europe can benefit from Japan’s experience in building resilient ammunition and weapons supply chains, while Japan could draw from European innovation, particularly from the UK, France, Germany and Sweden in emerging defence technologies.

One crucial risk that must be acknowledged is the possibility that the differing levels of reliance on the US for security could fracture the EU-Japan partnership. Deepening strategic cooperation is key to prevent such a drift apart and ensure that different security postures do not undermine their shared strategic objectives.

Differing levels of reliance on the US for security could fracture the EU-Japan partnership. Deepening strategic cooperation is key to prevent such a drift.

Economic security is another key domain. Europe’s green transition has deepened its reliance on China for critical minerals and technologies. Despite talk of de-risking, Brussels has lagged translating rhetoric into action, especially in strategic sectors. Meanwhile, Beijing’s ongoing charm offensive, with bilateral overtures to countries like Portugal and Hungary, threatens to splinter the EU’s fragile consensus. Unlike the US or Japan, the EU remains more open to Chinese goods, continuing to prioritise WTO principles even as economic coercion becomes an increasingly common tool of statecraft.

Here, Europe could take a page from Japan’s playbook. Tokyo has long been exposed to China’s economic strategies and is several steps ahead in institutionalising de-risking measures, marked by institutional innovations such as the 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act.

A joint initiative on critical raw materials, open to other like-minded partners such as Canada and India, along with deeper cooperation in the field of semiconductors, would signal strategic maturity. Including small and medium businesses in shared resilience frameworks through security clearance mechanisms would also boost innovation and diversify supply chains. Brussels and Tokyo could coordinate their green industrial policies to avoid duplicative dependencies on Chinese technology while ensuring WTO compliance. Lastly, Japan and the EU should reconsider the strategic value of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), including the possibility of the EU joining the agreement.

On diplomatic signalling, both sides should try to sync their Indo-Pacific strategies. Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision and the EU’s Indo-Pacific Strategy share broad objectives but lack operational overlap. Regular high-level dialogues, including coordinated messaging to Washington, can reinforce a trans-regional deterrence framework. The need to send unified signals to the US is urgent, particularly to avoid a perception in Washington that Tokyo and Brussels are passive actors in their own regions. Even if both remain committed to the US alliance, they must demonstrate that strategic alignment is not co-dependence, but a proactive and adaptive partnership.

This becomes even more critical as both Japan and the EU face growing challenges in defending international norms amid increasingly unilateral moves by the US. Their credibility when calling out China’s coercive behaviour, for example, risks being undermined when Washington itself deviates from the principles it once championed. Yet, it is precisely in this environment of strategic ambiguity that Tokyo and Brussels must double down on their commitment to the rules-based international order—not in opposition to the US, but to preserve the very framework that ensures their long-term interests.

To translate this commitment into action, multilateral diplomacy must remain central. Japan and the EU should jointly lead in upholding the rules-based order in the absence of US leadership. This includes initiatives within the G7, pushing WTO reform, and expanding climate financing and development aid for the Global South. As developing nations increasingly become battlegrounds for influence, Tokyo and Brussels should step up with sustained, visible commitments to infrastructure, education and climate to fill the vacuum left by a retreating US.

Strategic alignment between the EU and Japan must now move from concept to action. The risk isn’t absence—it’s inertia. As the US reorients its global commitments and China tests the fault lines of Western unity, Brussels and Tokyo must show that liberal democracies can still adapt, cooperate and lead. The goal is not simply to respond to uncertainty, but to shape it. Europe and Japan do not need to reinvent the wheel—they just need to start driving it.