THE WASHINGTON POST: Japanese leader tries flattering Trump in bid to avert tariffs

Japan could soon face U.S. tariffs if it doesn’t take steps to buy more from the United States, President Donald Trump said Friday after a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, threatening another U.S. ally as the American leader flexes economic muscles on the world stage.

Ishiba - the second foreign leader to meet with Trump since he reclaimed the Oval Office - was in town to try to avert the worst of the president’s trade impulses and to try to re-create the close relationship Trump had with the prime minister during his first term, Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in 2022. Abe was outgoing and an avid golfer - a pastime he used to his advantage to help forge a genuinely warm relationship with Trump. Neither Ishiba’s golf game nor his charisma can meet the same mark.

Still, Ishiba did his best Friday, lavishing Trump with praise and eliciting a chuckle through flattery. He thoroughly shut down a tariff-related question that could have led to tension, prompting Trump to reply: “Wow, that’s very good. He knows what he’s doing.”

The conversation was a first measure of how Trump will handle a close U.S. ally and a pillar of Washington’s strategy to counter China - but one that has long run the kind of trade surplus with the United States that Trump loves to hate. The U.S. leader held back from blasting Japan even as he warned in general terms about tariffs.

The U.S. strategy to work alongside Japan and South Korea to rein in Beijing’s ambitions is one of the rare throughlines from the Biden administration. Trump officials say they don’t expect to make major changes to the Biden-era efforts to bring together Seoul and Tokyo, historic adversaries who nevertheless have been willing to work with each other in recent years, joined by their mutual worry about threats from China and North Korea. Current officials note that the strategy was in place during Trump’s first term as well.

“I think he’s going to do a fantastic job as prime minister, a very strong person. I wish he wasn’t so strong. I wish it was a little bit weaker than that, but that’s what I got. I have to get strong guys all the time,” Trump told reporters when asked about his first impressions of Ishiba, who stood stone-faced next to him during a news conference after their meeting.

But Trump warned that “we’re going to have tariffs, mostly reciprocal tariffs … where a country pays so much or charges us so much, and we do the same, so very reciprocal because I think that’s the only fair way to do it. That way nobody’s hurt. They charge us, we charge them.”

He said that a formal announcement would probably come early next week. He seemed to be referring to tariffs applied broadly and not specifically to Japan.

Ishiba, meanwhile, took the moment to lavish Trump with praise.

“For many, many years, I have watched him on television, so it was quite exciting,” Ishiba said through an interpreter.

“On television, he is frightening and he has a very strong personality, but when I met with him, actually, he was very sincere and very powerful and with strong will for the United States,” the interpreter translated the Japanese leader as saying, as Trump chuckled in response.

Ishiba promised that he was not “trying to suck up to him.” He vowed to buy more energy exports from the United States to trim the trade surplus, depicting himself as an avid customer of another favorite Trumpian export product.

For Japanese officials, the summit was an opportunity to reaffirm U.S. security commitments under Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which guarantees that Washington will defend Japanese territories, including disputed islands in the East China Sea. They are wary of Trump potentially negotiating directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping and concessions that he may give along the way that affect Japan, analysts said.

Tokyo is also grappling with increasing security tensions in the region, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s growing military threats in Asia.

Ishiba held “Trump countermeasures meetings” with senior officials to strategize for the meeting, Japanese media reported. Aides have coached Ishiba on how to make simple, easy-to-understand arguments that explain Japan’s contributions to the United States, according to local media.

With Trump announcing tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China in his first two weeks in office, Ishiba is expected to emphasize that Japan has been the biggest foreign investor in the United States since 2019, and these investments have helped create American jobs, analysts say.

“Japan wants to have a good relationship with the United States - an unchanged relationship, American commitment to protect Japan as an important defense ally, and continued good economic relationship, and an American understanding of the dangerous situation in the Indo-Pacific area,” said Mieko Nakabayashi, a political science professor at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Japanese leaders sought to emphasize to Trump the severity of Beijing’s threats against Taiwan and why the United States should protect Taiwan, and to portray Tokyo as Washington’s leading partner in the Asia-Pacific region to help advance both their interests.

Still, there are deep anxieties about what a second Trump term may bring, especially given the unusual period of political disarray Japan is experiencing. Shortly after Ishiba took office in October, his conservative party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 15 years.

Political instability is unusual in Japan, where the Liberal Democratic Party has enjoyed a nearly unchallenged grip on power for nearly seven decades.

Japanese officials and business leaders are bracing for Trump’s tariff war to reach Japan, with both the potential for new tariffs on the country and the impact of new tariffs on other nations. Japan’s automakers, for example, have plants in Mexico and Canada that will be affected if Trump’s threatened 25 percent tariffs go into effect.

Trump also stood by President Joe Biden’s decision to block Nippon Steel’s attempt to purchase U.S. Steel on national security grounds, saying Japan would “invest” in the U.S. company without purchasing it outright.

Under the Biden administration, the United States and Japan - then led by Ishiba’s predecessor, Fumio Kishida - dramatically increased their cooperation, including in the areas of military coordination, economic security, space and technology.

Under Kishida, Japan made a dramatic shift to shed its postwar constraints and increased its defense budget to 2 percent of gross domestic product over five years, making it the third-largest in the world. Any efforts to raise defense spending beyond 2 percent are likely to be controversial and to generate fierce pushback from opposition parties, which believe that the government is overstepping the boundaries of its pacifist postwar constitution through such measures.

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Lee reported from Seoul.

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