The Signal Interview
Few Japanese CEOs have bridged business and politics, or Japan and the wider world, as Takeshi “Tak” Niinami has done. It has been 10 years since the Harvard Business School graduate became the first non-family member to lead Suntory, the drinks company behind Yamazaki, Maker’s Mark, and Orangina. In that time, the former Mitsubishi and Lawson executive has advised four Japanese prime ministers, chaired his country’s leading business lobby group, and sat on numerous international CEO councils. From that perspective, he says, “MAGA is a big lesson to us.”
Companies in Japan and beyond have not yet understood the message of the “anger, mistrust, and anxiety” in society that propelled President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, Niinami warns. What he calls old-fashioned capitalism hasn’t worked for those in need, he argues. And unless corporate leaders embrace “inclusive” capitalism, broadening the number of people who benefit from business success, they should expect populism to get “worse and worse.”
Such laments were more common a few years ago, as CEOs digested the shock of Trump’s first election victory in 2016 — and before the backlash to companies’ societal and environmental interventions quietened some of capitalism’s louder reformers. Niinami is unusual among his peers for going beyond the usual calls for business to do more to provide economic opportunity or reduce its environmental impact. Instead, he is calling for the companies that did best under the old version of capitalism to compensate those who did worst.
When Big Tech executives attended Trump’s second inauguration,“I found, oh my gosh, they support MAGA,” he says. Ordinary Trump voters who had lost jobs because of globalization and free trade had more reason to back the president’s movement, “but some people got the benefits. They have to return their proceeds to those who got affected.”
Niinami lauds companies that give a percentage of their profits away, such as Japan’s Asics and India’s Reliance Industries — though Suntory’s interpretation of giving back to society takes the more conventional form of supporting cultural, educational, and environmental initiatives.
“The Big Tech people who made a fortune should talk about how to redistribute wealth, because MAGA will continue if they don’t take action,” he says. “Public action to distribute wealth doesn’t work so much. So I think corporations must do that.”
MAGAnomics hit the liquor store
Niinami does not blame Trump for the “abnormal situation” he sees in US politics, describing the president as a symptom of the dislocations that propelled him to power. But he admits he was surprised by the impact of the trade policy Trump has pursued to fulfill his promise to his MAGA base.
Trump’s pattern of imposing tariffs, then pausing or cutting them, is intentionally inconsistent, he says. But it has left consumers feeling anxious, and amplified a trend that predated the president’s reelection: shoppers choosing cheaper products. “A trade-down has started,” he says, adding that some consumers who would once have bought $35 bottles of American whiskey are opting for $20 alternatives.
Suntory had planned for such a possibility, taking a lesson from the tit-for-tat tariffs of Trump’s first term by stockpiling its products in Europe and the US. But Niinami warns that the uncertainty has made it hard to approve investments in manufacturing that may not pay back for a decade. He is reluctant to cut prices, saying that this would damage the “trust” Suntory has built with consumers through its investment in raising the quality of its products, but thinks “price increases are impossible in this situation.”
Even so, he sees some hope that Trump’s administration will heed “the message from the market” that overly aggressive import duties could send the US into recession, damaging the president’s party in the 2026 midterm elections. Speaking shortly before the US and China sealed a 90-day truce in their trade war, Niinami said: “I believe that the realities eventually win.”
Lessons from a transpacific whiskey deal
The economics graduate has been steeped in the US market since arriving at Suntory months after it bought Beam, the Kentucky-based distiller behind Jim Beam. The deal propelled Suntory from the world’s 15th largest spirits company into the global top three, but Beam’s $16 billion price tag saddled it with debt, putting pressure on Niinami to boost profits quickly.
Worse, he soon discovered, the two companies’ cultures were “180 degrees” apart, with the US subsidiary focused on improving profit margins short-term over investing in product quality, while the Japanese parent chased market share and quality, even at the expense of margins.
It was, he has said, a Lost in Translation moment for the new CEO, as he tried to instill Suntory principles such as “Yatte Minahare,” a motto he describes as encouraging ambitious “out-of-the-box” thinking about innovating for customers. Changing incentive programs and being clearer about expectations in job descriptions helped him bridge the “East meets West” divide, as did his formation of a Suntory University, where Japanese and American colleagues could learn from each other.
Niinami was well aware of Japanese acquisitions in the US going awry because of culture clashes, and spent a long breakfast meeting with a former Sony CEO to learn which mistakes not to repeat. His Harvard peers working in investment banking and private equity also offered “a lot of tips,” he says, and told him he would be forgetting his US business school lessons if he took a hands-off approach to managing Beam.
The history of Japanese companies’ US acquisitions shows “Japan is too naive,” he says. And the lesson he took from Sony’s experience was, “Don’t trust local management too much.” Niinami’s difficult relationship with Matt Shattock, Beam’s CEO until 2019, was picked over in a HBS case study, and he does not elaborate on it. But he says integrations should be led by the buyer’s CEO, with the local entity managed strictly. “Don’t let the local manager [be] unleashed from Tokyo,” he warns.
A turning point for corporate Japan
A decade ago, there were few case studies of successful Japanese integrations of US companies for Suntory to follow. “Now there are more cases,” Niinami says, citing the transformation in Suntory’s global spirits revenues from $2.5 billion to $5.5 billion in the decade to 2023 as one of them. And, for all the turmoil in the US, he is expecting another wave of Japanese acquisitions there.
Japan’s strength in manufacturing may be “a common interest,” he says, but service sector companies like Tokio Marine and Recruit Holdings have also struck successful deals. From his position as chair of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, he says, “Japanese business leaders have started to think, ‘Wow, maybe we can do it.’”
That revived ambition comes at a turning point for corporate Japan, as the country marks the end of a long period of deflation. Japanese corporations carry about $2.5 trillion in excess cash on their balance sheets, Niinami says, which activists are now challenging them to spend. “I think that’s a good thing,” he adds, advising his peers to use their cash not to repurchase stock or increase dividends, but to explore “new frontiers” and make acquisitions.
Japan has too many companies, he says, adding that the mooted merger of Nissan and Honda “should happen,” even though talks collapsed in February. A more dynamic Japanese business scene will require further corporate governance reforms, he acknowledges, but he thinks that these will come.
They may have to come from the companies themselves, however. Niinami expresses frustration with the reluctance of his country’s politicians to tackle issues with horizons longer than the next election. “Japanese political leaders still tend not to understand business,” he says: “Business leaders like me always talk about root causes, but they don’t listen.”
Earning society’s support in a tumbling world
Nobuhiro Torii, the great-grandson of Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii, took on the role of president six months ago, and Niinami now spends almost half of his time abroad, roving from Taipei to Riyadh to discern the geopolitical “big picture” and get a “hunch” about where to invest.
But his travels have also made him anxious about everything from a “hegemonic” China’s actions in the Taiwan Strait to the risk of unregulated artificial intelligence “having the vision to push a button” and unleash a nuclear war.
“I definitely believe that the globe is crying,” he says, citing “messages like Covid” and the risk of melting icebergs releasing dangerous bacteria as reasons why businesses cannot let up on their sustainability efforts. Those efforts will build trust with distrusting societies, he adds, recalling a time when Lawson rebuilt entire communities around its convenience stores after devastating storms, earning enduring loyalty from local customers. “Trust generates the market cap,” he says.
But coordination is needed in sustainability as in AI regulation, he says. In the absence of strong US leadership or cooperation between international powers, “corporates must do it.”
In some ways, Niinami says, his appointment as an outsider CEO made Suntory a more normal company. “But we don’t want to be a normal company,” he adds, saying that it has only survived for 126 years because its leaders always believed they needed to be supported by society. “And I don’t think that’s normal.”
If Suntory can keep earning that support, “We can make a living forever,” he adds. And he has told board chair Nobutada Saji, another family member, that he will stay for the next decade of that time. He has more to do, he notes, from fulfilling the promise of the Indian market to realizing Suntory’s dream of making roses that match its pale blue corporate branding. After years of genomic research by its flower division that he hopes may find applications elsewhere, “the color is not completely blue yet.”
Besides, he adds, “I think the world is tumbling, but the world is more interesting.”