Washington and Tokyo’s unprecedented step to bolster the yen already appears to be unraveling.
On July 30, Japan’s finance ministry reportedly sold as much as $59 billion to buy the Japanese currency, then at 40-year-lows. Tokyo and Washington later confirmed they had acted together to bolster a weak yen. It was the first time they did so since 1998, and both U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama pledged to do it again if needed.
