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I think most serious people knew that Trump was making a metaphorical joke. I spent 14 years working in Japan and saw importing from the other side handling everything from hair curlers (few restrictions, but had to be repackaged in sizes suitable for the local market) to machinery (had to meet the same standard tests which domestically produced machinery had to meet to be sold). Let's just say that we (the USA) are much more tolerant on what we allow on the market than are the Japanese.

We also had an issue with a well-known wine company who didn't want to produce bottles with the same color shades of bottles sold in Japan. The reason for that restriction is because their recycling industry is geared for only certain color separations to ensure conformity. The Europeans have no trouble meeting such restriction because they are geared to producing smaller runs of special orders. They see Japan as just one more unique market (among many) with special needs. Our wine industry, OTOH, sees this as an unreasonable restriction met to keep them out of the market because they want to sell production surplus as it is as if Japan was merely an extension of, say, Canada or Mexico where there are no such restrictions on wine bottle colors.

Variations of the wine bottle model are prevalent in many other industries.

Long story short is that Japan isn't particularly unfair to the United States and, in fact, favors American imports in many, many cases. Further, once things like royalties, license fees, tourism, services, etc. are included and not just physical trade goods, there is almost no trade deficit between our two nations.