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US President Donald Trump continued his week-long tour of Asia, arriving in the Japanese capital Tokyo on Monday.
President Trump was welcomed at the Imperial Palace and participated in a courtesy call with Japan’s Emperor Naruhito.
He is scheduled to meet with newly appointed Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who hopes to forge a personal friendship with the US leader to ease trade tensions and transform Japan-US relations.
Takaichi, who took office last week, has already shown goodwill by offering to buy a fleet of Ford F-150 trucks for official use, even though such vehicles are impractical given the many narrow roads in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
President Trump quickly embraced the Ford truck idea, telling reporters on Air Force One: “She has good taste.”
“It’s a hot truck,” he added.
This will be an early diplomatic test for Takaichi, the first female Japanese leader who supports a tenuous coalition government.
President Trump, who left Malaysia for the first stop of his tour on Monday, was full of praise for Japan’s new prime minister, saying he had a feeling he would get along “very well” with former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in 2022.
Trump developed a good relationship with Prime Minister Abe during his first term in office, often referring to the slain Japanese leader as a “close friend.”
President Trump said, “I’m looking forward to meeting the new prime minister. I’ve heard phenomenal things. She was a great ally and friend of my friend and former prime minister, Shinzo Abe. He was great.”
“I know they were very close, and I think philosophically they were close. That’s good. It’s going to be very good, it’s going to help Japan and the United States. I think she’s going to be a great person.”
The two had already spoken by phone on Saturday, when Trump was on a flight from Washington to Malaysia.
Highlighting his position as a disciple of the late prime minister, Takaichi said he praised Trump for brokering the Gaza ceasefire that took effect on October 10, ending more than two years of Israeli attacks on the enclave that have killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
“I thought[Trump]was a very cheerful and fun person,” she said. “He recognized me well and told me he remembered me as a politician that (former) Prime Minister really cared about,” she said.
“And I told the president that I very much look forward to welcoming him to Tokyo.”
The hospitality is rooted in the search for a strategy to navigate the increasingly complex trade relationship that President Trump rocked with tariffs earlier this year. President Trump wants Asian allies to buy more American goods and commit to funding to build factories and energy infrastructure in their countries.
The meeting in Japan comes ahead of President Trump’s much-anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.
Earlier, President Trump had traveled to Malaysia to broker a ceasefire agreement between Thailand and Cambodia, where a border dispute has been going on for months. The deal was signed in Kuala Lumpur, and President Trump boasted that it was the eighth “war” his administration had “solved.”
He also attended the ASEAN Summit in the Malaysian capital and met with leaders of regional allies.
The visit to Seoul concludes his first trip to Asia, as the world looks to see if his meeting with Xi can provide a breakthrough and end months of trade disagreements between the world’s two largest economies that have spooked global markets.
Additional sources of information • AP