Japan’s leader Abe heads to New York to meet Trump

Donald Trump was to receive Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the first foreign leader to meet him since his election on Thursday in NY, where he continued his consultations to form the next administration.

On Thursday, President-Elect Donald Trump will reportedly meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York City.

Trump, a Republican, fanned worries in Tokyo and beyond with his campaign comments on the possibility of Japan acquiring nuclear arms and demands that allies pay more for the upkeep of USA forces on their soil or face their possible withdrawal.

“TPP’s significance goes beyond setting economic rules for the Asia-Pacific region, but also has strategic significance of securing peace and stability of the region by countries that share basic values”, Mr Abe told Turnbull.

Abe will probably stick their talking points in his back pocket and instead focus on shaping the broad contours of a Trump strategy for the U.S. -Japan alliance and Asia overall, where there now is none.

“There has been a lot of confusion”, said one Japanese official.

President-elect Donald Trump used his Twitter account on Wednesday to denounce reports of problems in his transition team, singling out the New York Times for saying world leaders have had trouble getting in touch with him.

The Japan-US alliance is the axis of Japan’s diplomacy and security.

The Times reported that, while the presidents of Egypt and Israel, got through to Trump quickly, British Prime Minister Theresa May had to wait 24 hours before reaching Trump. This first quasi-summit with an Asian leader was prompted by Abe’s casual proposal in their November 9 phone call that they get lunch or dinner while Abe is in the neighborhood on his way to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru. At present there are 54,000 American military personnel based in Japan, and the East Asian nation has become reliant on American forces to balance the potential threats posed by China and North Korea.

On the economic front, Abe might also be able to offer Japanese technology and financing for USA infrastructure projects Trump has said he wants to promote.

A separate poll by the Yomiuri newspaper on Tuesday found 58 percent saw Trump as bad for the economy – the same proportion that views him as bad for national security.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, an army general who seized power three years ago, appears to have been the first leader to speak to Trump after the election, ahead of closer allies like the leaders of Britain and Germany.

But Taniguchi said United States commitment in Japan is about more than relations between the two nations, it’s about a commitment to the broader Indo-Pacific region. The officials also said they did not to know who to contact regarding the meeting.

For over a year and a half on the campaign trail, #Donald Trump told his supporters that he would “Make America Great Again”.

Mr Okamoto, a lawmaker with Mr Abe’s junior coalition partner Komeito, met Mr Trump about 16 years ago while working at an investment bank in NY.

When asked on Wednesday whether the Prime Minister would raise the issue of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said trust-building would be the focus at the first meeting.

Dr Parkinson said United States economic diplomacy “effectively underwrote the massive explosion of regional incomes from Japan, to the Asian Tigers of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore” in decades past, was still immensely important to Asia and Australia. He has denied that the transition to the White House is in a disarray.

This might give more impetus to a hawkish Mr Abe to implement laws to further Japan’s military might.

He struck a similar tone in a brief conversation with the embattled South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, telling her that he would retain existing security arrangements, which include the presence of 28,500 US troops south of the heavily armed border dividing the Korean peninsula. At the very least, the Japan-US relationship has been moved to the top of Trump’s global agenda.