By AAMER MADHANI and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba didn’t skimp on the legwork as he prepared for his first meeting with President Donald Trump.
He huddled this week with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, two executives Trump recently hosted at the White House. He sought advice from his immediate predecessor, Fumio Kishida.
Ishiba even called on the widow of Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister with whom Trump bonded over rounds of golf during his first term.
“It will be our first face-to-face talks, so I would like to focus on building a personal relationship of trust between the two of us,” Ishiba told reporters before heading to Washington for his White House visit, taking place Friday.
It’s a tall order for Ishiba to replicate Trump’s relationship with Abe, who resigned as prime minister in 2020 and was assassinated by a gunman as he delivered a campaign speech in 2022. Nevertheless, Ishiba is making it a priority to connect with Trump.
Ishiba, who took office in October, will be just the second world leader to visit the White House during Trump’s new term. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week was the first hosted by Trump.
Ishiba arrived Thursday evening for his roughly 24-hour visit to Washington. He’s expected to spend a little more than two hours with Trump for a working lunch and a joint news conference before making the return trip to Tokyo.
Still, making the whirlwind journey is essential for Ishiba as he looks to ensure that the U.S. and Japan stay on solid footing with the return of Trump and his “America First” worldview. Both countries have been challenged by China’s growing economic and military assertiveness in the Pacific and concerns about a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Ishiba will also look to remind Trump — who has proposed tariffs on both friends and foes in an effort to boost American manufacturing — about the long-running U.S.-Japan alliance. Japanese companies employ nearly 1 million Americans and have held the top spot for cumulative foreign direct investment into the U.S. over the last five years.
Another sensitive issue Ishiba is prepared to address is Japan’s Nippon Steel’s efforts to win approval for a $14.1 billion acquisition of the Pittsburgh-headquartered U.S. Steel. President Joe Biden before leaving office last month blocked the deal, citing national security concern. Trump in December said he was “totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company.”
Ishiba isn’t necessarily planning on bringing up the deal but has prepped to make a fulsome case for Nippon if Trump raises it, according to a Japanese government official who insisted on anonymity to discuss the leader’s private deliberations.
Nippon and U.S. Steel have filed a lawsuit aimed at overturning the blocking of the deal. And Nippon has stepped up its public push, arguing the “transaction is in line with President Trump’s focus” on manufacturing and “contributes to President Trump’s goals promoting U.S. investment, creating U.S. jobs, and strengthening U.S. manufacturing.”
Defense spending is also expected to be on the leaders’ agenda. Japan has pledged to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2027, or 60% over five years. That level of spending meets the benchmark set for members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Japan cooperates with the NATO alliance but is not a member.
But Trump is pressing NATO and other allies to spend even more on defense, challenging them to raise spending to 5% of their overall economic output — a benchmark that will be difficult for countries to reach.
Ishiba could remind Trump that Japan is a big supporter of the U.S. defense industry, spending billions of dollars on fighter jets and missile defense systems to try to salve any concerns from the Republican president.
“President Trump is actually a good listener, too. Perhaps we (will) have a good chemistry,” Ishiba told reporters earlier this week.
Ishiba invited SoftBank’s Son and OpenAI’s Altman to his office this week as he prepped for his Trump meeting. The U.S. president last month brought Son, Altman and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to the White House to spotlight a $500 billion investment for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by the three executives’ companies.
Ishiba during his meeting told them that he wants Japan and the United States to deepen cooperation in AI to make the world a more peaceful and safer place.
“I think Prime Minister Ishiba certainly sees this is an important and critical opportunity for him to reestablish what were exceptional bonds between President Trump and Japan in the first Trump administration,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican who served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan during his first administration.
Abe was among the few world leaders who developed a bond with Trump during his first term.
Abe built a rapport with Trump over rounds of golf and dinners with their wives at the president’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort, Mar-a-Lago. During Trump’s 2019 state visit to Japan, Abe took Trump to a sumo wrestling match and arranged for him to be the first leader to meet with Japan’s newly enthroned emperor.
Abe and Trump’s tight bond was all the more remarkable, because Trump early in his first White House term threatened a “big border tax” on Japanese automaker Toyota if it built a plant in Mexico and derided Japan for what he deemed insufficient defense spending.
Hagerty, at an event at Washington’s Hudson Institute on Thursday, said it might not be a bad idea for Ishiba — who golfed in high school but has since given up the sport — to dust off his clubs as he looks to bond with Trump.
“I hope that he takes the golf lessons back up again,” Haggerty said, “because I found golf diplomacy to be a wonderful opportunity for us.”
Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. AP writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.