Japan reportedly wooing Donald Trump in pre-emptive move to stave off trade and North Korea 'nightmare'

The Japanese government has reportedly reached out to Donald Trump's team after concluding that he is almost certain to be the Republican candidate in the 2024 US presidential election and has a good chance of being re-elected, in what analysts say is a pre-emptive move to stave off a potential "nightmare" scenario for Tokyo.

While Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has not commented on the November 5 election's potential outcomes, Taro Aso, a former prime minister and the current vice-president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, appears to have been given the task of leading the campaign to engage with people close to the former president.

On January 10, Aso addressed the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, a Washington DC think tank to give a speech about the threat to peace in the Indo-Pacific posed by China's position on Taiwan.

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That same evening, Aso attended a dinner reception with Senator Bill Hagerty, who served as US ambassador to Japan under Trump, the Asahi newspaper reported, before travelling to New York the following day with the aim of meeting Trump. Aso reportedly said that his visit was meant to be "a sign that I wanted to meet him".

Trump was in New York on that day to attend a court session in a civil fraud trial in which he is a defendant but due to his busy schedule, he was unable to meet Aso.

It appears Aso was encouraged to make the trip after Trump sent out feelers to the Japanese government late last year. The Asahi quoted one source as saying that Aso had been contacted because he, along with the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, were the only two Japanese politicians that Trump remembered.

Analysts said it was likely that PM Kishida hopes these early overtures to Trump may temper any demands he could make of Japan should he be re-elected in November. This tactic, they point out, is straight out of a playbook that Abe used in November 2016.

"Abe went to great lengths to manage the relationship with Trump and to manage his ego," said Ben Ascione, an assistant professor of international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University. "And even Abe's critics had acknowledged that he did a very good job in mitigating some of the worst possible outcomes that could have come out of the Trump presidency," Ascione told This Week In Asia.

Immediately after Trump won the 2016 election but crucially before he had been sworn in, Abe made a stopover in New York before an Apec meeting in South America to meet the president-in-waiting.

This was a significant breach of protocol, Ascione said, with then-President Barack Obama "irritated" at Abe's actions and largely ignoring the Japanese leader at the Apec conference. When Abe was finally able to meet with Obama, he quickly offered to pay a visit to Pearl Harbor to pay his respects to the US war dead as a way of making amends for his meeting with Trump.

"This just goes to show the lengths that Abe was willing to go to to manage Trump's ego and limit the worst-case threats to the Japan-US alliance," Ascione said.

A second Trump presidency is of concern to Japan in several areas, but two stand out in particular: trade and security.

"Trump was tariff-happy in his first administration, putting tariffs on imports from China but also on long-standing US allies, such as Japan and Australia," said Ascione. For Japan, the biggest concerns would revolve around its auto industry.

"There are also worries about international trade regimes and the rules-based world order on trade, with the US under Trump vetoing judges nominated for the World Trade Organization appellate body."

Of even greater concern is Tokyo's critical security alliance with Washington.

"The first litmus test of the relationship will come over the Senkaku Islands," said Ascione, referring to the Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea that Beijing claims as its sovereign territory and refers to as the Diaoyu Islands.

"When Abe went to New York in November 2016, his concern was that Trump would say that the islands were no longer covered by the US-Japan security treaty" and that US forces would not help Japan to protect the territory from an attack by China, Ascione said.

"So Abe got in early, massaged Trump's ego and made sure that the islands would still be covered under Article Five of the treaty," he added. Article Five states that Japan and the US would act to "meet the common danger" in the event of an "armed attack" against either country within Japanese territories.

Kishida or his replacement is likely to attempt a similar approach to ensure US support on the issue, according to Ascione.

Tokyo is similarly concerned that Trump could repeat the threat he made during his first administration to withdraw US troops from Japan unless Tokyo covered a greater share of the costs of their presence. If Tokyo was not willing to do that, then it should develop nuclear weapons, Trump added.

While Abe, Aso and other right-leaning Japanese politicians would have few qualms about developing or deploying nuclear weapons, they are aware that the decision to do so would be long and complicated.

Tokyo is also worried that Trump might attempt to resurrect his "bromance" with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which reached its height during their 2018 summit in Singapore. Some analysts suggested Trump might be willing to officially recognise North Korea as a nuclear state and reach agreements that would allow Kim to keep his existing atomic arsenal and ease international sanctions if Pyongyang promises not to develop more warheads.

Both Japan and South Korea have less faith in Kim's word than Trump appears to have. There are fears that a second Trump administration would be open to an agreement with North Korea that would limit its number of weapons that could strike the US mainland but do nothing to stop the development of missiles capable of hitting targets in South Korea or Japan.

"Trump forging any sort of alliance with North Korea is Japan's nightmare scenario," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor of politics and international relations at Waseda University.

"No Japanese leader will have any influence over Trump when it comes to what he wants to do about North Korea, which makes Tokyo very afraid."

Shigemura believes there is a good possibility that Trump would withdraw US military and financial support for Ukraine, assisting Russia's efforts to occupy the country. This would indicate Washington might not come to the help of Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines if they were threatened by China, according to Shigemura.

"For Japan, there appears to be very little that would be good in a second Trump presidency," Shigemura said.

"They will not say it, of course, but the government here is very much hoping that Biden will remain as president after the elections because Trump is not a deep thinker when it comes to democracy."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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