US President Donald Trump’s administration hit out at Japan’s elevated rice tariffs, signaling that the grain and Tokyo will likely be targeted as the US seeks to apply reciprocal tariffs in the coming weeks.

“Look at Japan, tariffing rice 700 percent,” US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday during a press conference. She pointed to a chart that appeared to list tariff percentages from countries including India and the EU. The chart also showed the tariff rates Japan applies on beef and dairy imports from the US.

“President Trump believes in reciprocity,” Leavitt said during the press conference largely focused on accusations that Canada applies unfair tariffs on US goods. “All he’s asking for at the end of the day are fair and balanced trade practices.”

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The criticism comes with extra tariffs on steel and aluminum set to come into effect later in the day as Trump forges ahead with a strategy aimed at winning concessions from US trading partners and correcting perceived unfair practices. The US is also lining up reciprocal tariffs and a proposed 25 percent tariff on foreign car imports from April 2.

Japan and some other key US trading partners have sent officials to Washington to seek ways to avoid becoming direct targets of the Trump administration’s use of tariffs. Japan’s Trade Minister Yoji Muto concluded his talks with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick earlier this week in a failed bid to secure a reprieve from his US counterparts.

“We will refrain from commenting on each and every remark made by US officials. We will continue to communicate with our US counterparts,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a press briefing on Wednesday when asked about Leavitt’s comments.

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Japan currently doesn’t apply tariffs to rice that is imported through a state-managed trading mechanism. The amount of rice bought through that mechanism is capped at 770 thousand tons. A levy of ¥341 ($2.3031) per kilogram is applied to rice imported through non-governmental trade.

According to data from the Finance Ministry, Japan imported 675 thousand tons of rice through the government mechanism and 773 tons of rice through private trade in fiscal 2022.

The 700 percent tariff figure is not one officially released by Japan’s government, an Agriculture Ministry official told Bloomberg. He added that the government does not release tariff rates as percentages.

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A government document dated 2015 put tariff rates for excess rice imports at 778 percent, with a footnote saying the figure was calculated based on rice prices between 1999-2001.

Japan’s tariffs on US rice are about 204 percent, according to Kenichi Kawasaki, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies who has researched the nation’s levies.