The Japanese Finance Minister stated that coordination is underway with Bessent regarding foreign exchange policy.

Golden Finance reported that on May 12, Japan’s Finance Minister Koga Tsukiyo said that after her meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Besant in Tokyo, her team is working with the U.S. side in a smooth manner on foreign exchange policy. Koga said she would not comment on Besant’s specific remarks. This is Besant’s third visit to Japan since taking office in the cabinet. The market is closely watching this meeting because it has been less than two weeks since Tokyo authorities took a multi-day, seemingly large-scale yen intervention action to boost the yen exchange rate. Besant had previously hinted that she is critical of direct market intervention and instead prefers to support the yen by tightening monetary policy through the Bank of Japan. Japanese authorities may have first intervened as early as April 30, when the Bank of Japan’s decision to keep its policy unchanged, together with hawkish signals released by the Federal Reserve, pushed the yen to break through the 160 level against the U.S. dollar. Data analysis shows that Japanese authorities may have used about 247 million USD in this operation, followed by an additional intervention of about 300 million USD in a subsequent round. Koga said she also discussed issues such as artificial intelligence and critical minerals with Besant. (Jin10)