Bessent comments on Twitter/X:

“In my meeting with Minister @satsukikatayama , I was pleased to reaffirm the strong economic partnership between the United States and Japan. The level of communication and coordination between our teams in addressing undesirable, excess volatility in currency markets continues to be constant and robust.

I congratulated the Minister on Japan’s strong economic resiliency, and we held positive discussions on the US-Japan investment agreement, our shared efforts on critical minerals, and the United States’ support for Japan as it works to build an investment screening mechanism.”

This builds on the takeaway from earlier in the day here.

All in all, there isn’t too much to gather from their meeting today. It’s basically just the US acknowledging Japan’s plight and giving the nod to recent intervention moves from Tokyo. There was no commitment from either side in getting Washington involved to do any joint intervention efforts.

In the bigger picture, you can bet that Bessent probably dropped a subtle hint to Katayama so as to not take things too far when going at intervention alone. That might invite some political risks when it comes to the optics with the US needing to draw the line in labelling one of its closest allies as a ‘currency manipulator’.