Ishiba from Japan visits Washington quickly to establish a personal bond with Trump

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba didn’t skimp on the legwork as he prepared for his first meeting with President Donald Trump.

This week, he held discussions with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, both of whom Trump recently welcomed to the White House. Seeking guidance, he also consulted with his immediate predecessor, Fumio Kishida.

Ishiba even called on the widow of Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister with whom Trump bonded over rounds of golf during his first term.

Before his visit to the White House set for Friday, Ishiba shared with reporters his aim to establish a foundation of trust in his first in-person meeting with Trump. He expressed his focus on nurturing a personal relationship between them.

Ishiba faces a challenging task of emulating the strong bond that existed between the president and Abe, who tragically passed away in 2022. Despite this daunting challenge, Ishiba remains dedicated to forging a meaningful connection with Trump.

Ishiba, who took office in October, will be just the second world leader to visit the White House during Trump’s new term. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week was the first hosted by Trump.

Ishiba arrived Thursday evening for his roughly 24-hour visit to Washington. He’s expected to spend a little more than two hours with Trump for a working lunch and a joint news conference before making the return trip to Tokyo.

Still, making the whirlwind journey is essential for Ishiba as he looks to ensure that the U.S. and Japan stay on solid footing with the return of Trump and his “America First” worldview. Both countries have been challenged by China’s growing economic and military assertiveness in the Pacific and concerns about a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Trump in the talks intends to discuss joint training exercises, Japanese investment in the U.S. economy, improving cyber security capabilities, increasing space cooperation, and promoting joint business opportunities to develop critical technologies, including artificial intelligence and semiconductors, Trump administration officials said.

Ishiba, for his part, will look to remind Trump – who has proposed tariffs on both friends and foes in an effort to boost American manufacturing – about the long-running U.S.-Japan alliance. Japanese companies employ nearly 1 million Americans and have held the top spot for cumulative foreign direct investment into the U.S. over the last five years.

But the U.S. had a more than $68 billion trade deficit with Japan in 2024. Trump “pays a lot of attention” to the trade deficit as an indication of the “economic fairness and strength of the relationship,” said a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

Another sensitive issue Ishiba is prepared to address is Japan’s Nippon Steel’s efforts to win approval for a $14.1 billion acquisition of the Pittsburgh-headquartered U.S. Steel. President Joe Biden before leaving office last month blocked the deal, citing national security concern. Trump in December said he was “totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company.”

Ishiba isn’t necessarily planning on bringing up the deal but has prepped to make a fulsome case for Nippon if Trump raises it, according to a Japanese government official who insisted on anonymity to discuss the leader’s private deliberations.

Nippon and U.S. Steel have filed a lawsuit aimed at overturning the blocking of the deal. And Nippon has stepped up its public push, arguing the “transaction is in line with President Trump’s focus” on manufacturing and “contributes to President Trump’s goals promoting U.S. investment, creating U.S. jobs, and strengthening U.S. manufacturing.”

Defense spending is also expected to be on the leaders’ agenda. Japan has pledged to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2027, or 60% over five years. That level of spending meets the benchmark set for members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Japan cooperates with the NATO alliance but is not a member.

But Trump is pressing NATO and other allies to spend even more on defense, challenging them to raise spending to 5% of their overall economic output – a benchmark that will be difficult for countries to reach.

Ishiba could remind Trump that Japan is a big supporter of the U.S. defense industry, spending billions of dollars on fighter jets and missile defense systems to try to salve any concerns from the Republican president.

“President Trump is actually a good listener, too. Perhaps we (will) have a good chemistry,” Ishiba told reporters earlier this week.

Ishiba invited SoftBank’s Son and OpenAI’s Altman to his office this week as he prepped for his Trump meeting. The U.S. president last month brought Son, Altman and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to the White House to spotlight a $500 billion investment for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by the three executives’ companies.

Ishiba during his meeting told them that he wants Japan and the United States to deepen cooperation in AI to make the world a more peaceful and safer place.

“I think Prime Minister Ishiba certainly sees this is an important and critical opportunity for him to reestablish what were exceptional bonds between President Trump and Japan in the first Trump administration,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican who served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan during his first administration.

Abe was among the few world leaders who developed a bond with Trump during his first term.

Abe built a rapport with Trump over rounds of golf and dinners with their wives at the president’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort, Mar-a-Lago. During Trump’s 2019 state visit to Japan, Abe took Trump to a sumo wrestling match and arranged for him to be the first leader to meet with Japan’s newly enthroned emperor.

Abe and Trump’s tight bond was all the more remarkable, because Trump early in his first White House term threatened a “big border tax” on Japanese automaker Toyota if it built a plant in Mexico and derided Japan for what he deemed insufficient defense spending.

Hagerty, at an event at Washington’s Hudson Institute on Thursday, said it might not be a bad idea for Ishiba – who golfed in high school but has since given up the sport – to dust off his clubs as he looks to bond with Trump.

“I hope that he takes the golf lessons back up again,” Haggerty said, “because I found golf diplomacy to be a wonderful opportunity for us.”

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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. AP writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.