The Biggest Joke of the Century Just Fell Apart (And Washington is the only one still laughing)

 

The punch-line finally landed this week: the “$900 billion victory” that Donald Trump bragged about with Tokyo and Seoul has turned into the most expensive pratfall in modern diplomacy.

Let’s rewind. Two months ago the White House rolled out what it called “historic trade deals” with Japan and South Korea. The fine print was eye-watering:

• Seoul pledged to plough US$350 billion into American projects.
• Tokyo topped it with US$550 billion.
• Total headline figure: nine-hundred-billion dollars—more than the GDP of Saudi Arabia.

But the contract language was straight out of a mob movie:

• Any profit, America keeps 90 percent; the Asian partner gets 10 percent.
• Washington—not the investors—picks the sectors.
• The money had to arrive “up-front,” in cash, no strings attached.

In other words: you bring the wallet, we pick the restaurant, and by the way we’re keeping the leftovers.

South Korea’s national-security adviser, Cho Tae-yong, answered first. “We can’t,” he said bluntly. Seoul’s entire foreign-exchange chest is US$416 billion; handing over 85 percent of it would trigger a bank run.
Seoul’s workaround: create a Korean-managed fund that will lend money to Korean companies if they choose to build ships or chips in the U.S. No cash to Treasury, no guarantees, no apology.

Trump exploded on live television: “It will be CASH, paid in advance!”
Translation: this is a stick-up, not a venture-capital round.

Japan’s reply was more polite—and more devastating. Chief trade envoy Akazawa Ryosei admitted that only “1–2 percent” of the promised US$550 billion is real equity. The rest is loans, loan guarantees and insurance—all of which have to be repaid, with interest, in Tokyo. Net gift to Washington: about US$11 billion, not US$550 billion.

Then Japan’s politics imploded. Prime Minister Ishiba dissolved parliament, called an election, and watched the ruling coalition lose its majority. The new LDP president, Sanae Takaichi, is an ultra-nationalist who campaigned on the slogan: “The trade accord is humiliating; I won’t honor it.”
Her coalition partner, Komeito, has already walked out. No party can cobble together 233 seats in the 465-seat lower house, so Japan now has no functioning government to sign the check—even if it wanted to.

Result: the two allies that were supposed to bankroll Trump’s infrastructure renaissance have quietly pulled the fire alarm and fled the building.
Washington is left shouting into the void, demanding US$900 billion that never existed in the first place.

The episode is a master-class in geopolitical slap-stick:

• Stage 1: America writes a ransom note and calls it a trade deal.
• Stage 2: Tokyo and Seoul nod solemnly, promise the moon, then redefine “investment” as “loans we’ll recall later.”
• Stage 3: Trump demands hard cash; Asian officials shrug, cite central-bank law, parliamentary gridlock and, if necessary, the weather.
• Stage 4: The would-be robber discovers the vault is full of IOUs—written by himself.

As the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms puts it:
“The con-man met a sharper con-man.”

Moral of the story: when you try to mug a banker, make sure he hasn’t already sold you his own wallet.