Trump hits links, then chides Japan for uneven trade
TOKYO — President Donald Trump spent the first day of a five-nation Asia tour on Sunday feted with a gift, golf and fine dining by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. He began day two on Monday by telling Japanese business leaders that Abe is “a terrific person,” then assailed them for years of unfair trade.
The corporate titans, as well as Abe, are counting on the former — the prime minister’s personal courtship of Trump — to blunt the latter: any protectionist or retaliatory measures by Trump to upset the U.S.-Japan trading relationship.
A year after Trump’s unexpected election, many global leaders have taken his measure and quickly learned to play to the norm-breaking American president’s self-regard in hopes of either advancing bilateral initiatives or staving off Trump’s nationalist threats against their trade arrangements, or both.
They believe they have figured out that Trump likes to be liked, and that he likes broad displays of affinity.
Few have practiced the personal diplomacy as intently as Abe.
When the newly arrived Trump showed up on Sunday at the Kasumigaseki Country Club outside Tokyo to play golf, Abe surprised him with the sort of trucker caps Trump favors, in his preferred color — gold — and embroidered with a message borrowing from Trump’s signature slogan: “Donald & Shinzo, Make Alliance Even Greater.”
In July, French President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly invited Trump to Paris to join him for France’s massive Bastille Day parade.
Saudi King Salman gave Trump a tour of a state-of-the-art counterterrorism center he built, and promised to buy billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment.
In China, the third nation on Trump’s Asia itinerary, President Xi Jinping has planned an elaborate welcome for Trump in Beijing, which a top Chinese official described as a “state visit-plus.”
The president, with his new souvenir cap, enjoyed nine holes of golf with not only the prime minister but also the fourth-ranked golfer in the world, Hideki Matsuyama.
The outing was Abe’s act of reciprocity — a favorite word of Trump’s lately — for Trump’s welcome of the prime minister to the president’s Mar-a-lago country club in Florida, where they also played golf in February.
Afterward on Twitter, Abe complimented Trump as a “marvelous friend” and said their time on the links was “full of spirited conversation.”
Trump, in turn, tweeted that Abe and Matsuyama are “wonderful people.” Later, the two leaders and their wives dined together at an expensive teppanyaki grill, where Trump told reporters, “Our relationship is really extraordinary.”
He added: “I don’t think we’ve ever been closer to Japan than we are right now.”
Trump said he and Abe were having “very major discussions on many subjects” including North Korea and trade. “I think we’ll insult everybody by continuing to talk about trade,” he added.
It’s unclear exactly what exactly the Trump administration wants from Japan in the trade relationship.
The United States and Japan do not have a bilateral trade agreement, and Trump abandoned the multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Barack Obama brokered, which would have given American industries, including beef producers, new market access to Japan.
Trump’s message to the executives of 18 Japanese companies and nine multinational U.S. corporations sounded a vague warning on trade: “I have to say for the last many decades Japan has been winning. You know that.”
Japanese companies currently employ more than 850,000 American workers, and Japan has $400 billion invested in the U.S., a figure that has grown by 9 percent per year in recent years, a White House official said.
Some of those Japanese companies are automakers with major U.S. operations, yet Trump told the group, “Try building your cars in the United States instead of shipping them over. That’s not rude.”
As he typically does in foreign nations, Trump also hawked U.S. military hardware, but this time with a nod to his friend Abe:
“The prime minister is ordering a lot of military equipment, as he should be, given what’s happening with one of your neighbors” — an allusion to North Korea, whose provocative tests toward nuclear-armed missiles have rattled Japan and South Korea, Trump’s next stop.
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