Preparing for Second Trump Administration

Recognizing a scary future as real, the Japanese were astonished at the news from the United States that Donald Trump won the presidential election over Kamala Harris on November 6th. They believe that Trump, as 47th President of the United States, will push Japan to pay the U.S. more cost on security and business. Japan belatedly began to prepare for coming difficulties in maintenance of relationship with the U.S.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba made a telephone talk with Trump for five minutes in the morning of November 7th in Japan time. Ishiba congratulated Trump for his victory, hoping to work closely together to bring Japan-U.S. alliance to new heights, and they agreed on having a meeting in person as early as possible.

 

“It was the first opportunity for me to talk with him, but I had an impression that he was friendly and a man with whom I can discuss the bottom line without modification,” said Ishiba to the reporters after the dialogue with Trump. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is arranging Ishiba’s visit to the U.S., taking opportunity of visiting Peru for APEC Summit and Brazil for G20 Summit later this month.

 

Ishiba and MOFA believe that early meeting with president-elect Trump is indispensable to successfully maintain Japan-U.S. alliance. For them, the meeting between former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and president-elect Trump in 2016, when European leaders were still skeptical about Trump’s leadership, successfully impressed importance of the alliance on Trump.

 

However, it is unclear whether the personal relationship between Abe and Trump really worked well for smooth relations between Japan and the U.S. Trump met with the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore in 2018, when Abe was stressing the necessity of imposing pressure, rather than having dialogue, on Pyongyang. Trump walked out of Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade framework which Japan hoped the U.S. to stay in, as soon as he took the seat of White House.

 

Former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, revealed in his memoir that Trump asked Japan to raise its budget for U.S. Forces in Japan from $2.5 billion to $8 billion in 2019. Japan hopes to avoid such tremendous hike of security cost for Japan-U.S. alliance in the second term of the President Trump. However, it is unclear whether Ishiba can negotiate on the issue with Trump, given a weak political basis in politics in Japan.

 

In the presidential election of the Liberal Democratic Party in September, then Secretary General Toshimitsu Motegi revealed an episode that he was called “tough negotiator” by Trump in the negotiation over Japan-U.S. Trade Agreement in 2019. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is worried about negative impact of Trump’s victory on the acquisition deal of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel. “It may appear before his inauguration,” said METI officer to Nikkei Shimbun.

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