Japan PM in NY for 1st meeting by foreign leader with Trump

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday said his meeting with Donald Trump – the first by a foreign leader – convinced him the U.S. president-elect was someone “in whom I can have great confidence”.

“The Japan-US alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy and security”, Abe said before departing.

In September, Mr. Abe met with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but not Mr. Trump, when the prime minister was in NY for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

PM Abe said he wanted to “build trust” and “work together for prosperity and world peace”, before leaving for his trip.

The Trump adviser who spoke earlier this week said he expected the president-elect to reaffirm “the American commitment to being in the Pacific long term” and that while the question of financial support for USA troops might come up, it was unlikely to be a focus.

Trump surprised allies during the campaign by suggesting USA troops should withdraw from Japan and South Korea and the two countries should defend themselves, possibly with their own nuclear weapons.

A top aide to Abe, Katsuyuki Kawai, however, said that he was told by members of Trump’s transition team that President-elect’s previous remarks should not be taken literally.

That President-elect Donald Trump’s first sitdown with a foreign leader is with Japan’s Shinzo Abe is telling: the Republican billionaire’s rise to power has rattled America’s Asian allies.

“Within hours after the U.S. election result was confirmed, Team Abe worked overtime to secure a meeting with the President-elect”.

Mr Trump also made it clear during the presidential race that he is hostile to the kind of free trade deals that tend to be the focus of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Hours before Abe and Trump met, Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida met in Lima to discuss the Paris climate accord – a deal Trump has pledged to exit.

The Trump adviser said he expected Trump would reaffirm “the American commitment to being in the Pacific long-term”.

The newspaper said Trump was working without official State Department briefing materials in his dealings with foreign leaders.

Japan is the second-largest foreign investor in the USA after the United Kingdom and provides more than 800,000 jobs, many in the auto sector, according to the department of commerce.

Abe and Trump gave each other golfing gear as gifts during their meeting, according to a Japanese government statement.

Uncertainty over the talks shows the difficulties in turning Trump from a freewheeling businessman into a sitting president with a watertight schedule and a fully functioning administration by his inauguration on January 20.

Trump aides said Thursday that Trump had spoken with the leaders of Azerbaijan, The Netherlands and Poland, part of 32 world leaders who have spoken with Trump or Pence in recent days.

Trump also rolled out new teams that will interact with the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department and other national security agencies.

During the campaign he demanded Japan pay more for the upkeep of USA bases.

“It’s not our place to inject ourselves into those decisions about who the president-elect is going to speak to and what they’re going to discuss”, Kirby told reporters Wednesday.

Abe will be particularly looking for clarification about comments Trump made during the election campaign about withdrawing US troops from Asia (there are 50,000 stationed in Japan alone) and cutting off ties with countries in the region. “I know the President-elect himself is very happy with how the transition is going”. In October, she finally said that she was voting for Donald Trump.

Moskowitz, who voted for Clinton, suggested there were “positive signs” that Trump might govern differently than he campaigned, but she wrote in a letter to parents that many of her students, who are overwhelmingly black and Latino, would feel that “they are the target of the hatred that drove Trump’s campaign”.

“The slow Chinese response says a lot about their own understanding of the political situation and political tides in an American context and their lack of understanding of Mr Trump, his team and his world view”, he said. Japanese officials on Wednesday said that they have not yet finalised when or where in NY the meeting would take place.

Until now, United States news outlets have suggested that former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani was tipped for the job of top diplomat.