Japan’s new PM will hope the Abe effect endears Trump to her at crucial talks | Japan
Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, will face the first real test of her diplomatic and personal skills when she meets Donald Trump for talks in Tokyo that are expected to focus on trade and security.
Takaichi, who this month became Japan’s first female leader after winning the vote to lead the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP), made her international debut at the Asean summit this weekend.
But it will be his meeting with Trump on Tuesday that will determine the course of Tokyo’s relationship with its key and increasingly unpredictable ally, which has imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on Japan despite the US president’s apparent affection for that country.
Takaichi will be eager to show off his international credentials, days after forming a potentially shaky coalition with a small party that still leaves his administration two seats shy of a majority in the Japanese parliament’s powerful lower house and dependent on opposition lawmakers to pass legislation.
The 64-year-old, who secured his post as prime minister with support from the right of the LDP, shares Trump’s suspicions about China’s military activities in the Asia-Pacific; However, Tokyo, like Beijing, found itself the target of “America first” trade policy.
Trump, who oversaw a cease-fire agreement over the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia on the first leg of his Asia tour at the weekend – his longest foreign trip since taking office in January – will be encouraged by Takaichi’s determination to accelerate Japan’s biggest military build-up since the second world war.
He said last week that he would aim to raise Japan’s defense spending, which Trump has long demanded, to 2 percent of GDP by the end of March, two years earlier than planned.
Japan has also moved to acquire “counter-strike” capabilities from the United States, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, and plans to deploy domestically developed, longer-range Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles.
However, the postwar bilateral security agreement, which requires the United States to come to Japan’s defense if attacked, remains a source of tension. Trump has said he wants Japan to pay more for the cost of housing about 60,000 U.S. troops in Japan, most of them on the southern island of Okinawa.
During his first term, he said that if the United States were attacked, Japan “didn’t need to help us at all” and was free to “watch it on Sony television.”
Few expect major concessions on trade this week after Trump cut tariffs on Japanese autos from 27% to 15%, bringing some relief to Japan’s export-led economy in exchange for $550 billion of Japanese investment in the United States. But Takaichi is expected to seek further relief with promises to buy more American pickup trucks, soybeans and gasoline.
The mercurial president’s emphasis on personal chemistry should benefit Takaichi, who was among Trump’s favorite world leaders during his mentor, assassinated former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s first term in the White House.
Abe was the first foreign leader to visit then-President-elect Trump in New York in November 2016 and gifted him a $3,700 gold golf club that the president had lost and later found. The two leaders later met on golf tours in Japan and at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Speaking to reporters after a phone call with Takaichi on Saturday, Trump said: “He’s great… We’ll see him very soon. He’s very friendly. He was a very, very close ally and friend of Prime Minister Abe, and you know he was one of my favorites.”
Trump’s visit to Japan will begin with Emperor Naruhito at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and then hold talks with Takaichi at the state guesthouse at Akasaka Palace – the site of Trump’s 2019 meeting with Abe – before heading to the Apec summit in South Korea for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that could extend their countries’ tariff truce.
