"A long four years begins"
Japan braces for Trump again
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This time, Japan was not surprised.
Unlike in 2016, when the Japanese government had assumed that Donald Trump could not win the presidency, Tokyo has been all too aware that he stood a real chance of winning the presidency again in 2024, as captured by that series of terms – moshi-tora, hobo-tora, kaku-tora – whose use expanded and contracted in line with opinion polls.
The confidence that Trump would win faded somewhat after President Joe Biden left the race and was replaced on the Democratic ticket by Vice President Kamala Harris, to the point that Motegi Toshimitsu, who sought the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) leadership first and foremost as the “Trump whisperer” praised by the president-elect as a “tough negotiator,” had virtually no success with this argument in the LDP’s leadership election in September. While there may have been other reasons for Motegi’s lack of success, the fact is that running as the candidate with the most experience dealing with Trump directly did Motegi no favors. As this Google Search Trends chart suggests, public interest in Trump’s chances ebbed after Harris entered the race.
But now that Trump has in fact won a second term, defeating Harris by a comfortable electoral college margin and with a majority of the popular vote, Japan’s leaders and the Japanese people are wrapping their minds around an outcome that they recognized was possible and even likely but which nevertheless could have a profound impact on their country.
An article on the front page of the Nikkei Shimbun, Japan’s leading business daily (and the owner of the Financial Times), by Washington bureau chief Okoshi Masahiro states matters plainly: “A selfish superpower that threatens the world.”
With an ally whose internal troubles are unhealed, the common challenge for Japan and other allied nations will be to prevent a ‘power vacuum’ in the international order. A long four years begins.
Other articles note the potential impact of tariffs; the implications of the “Trump trade” on Japan’s financial markets and the yen; the effect on the Ukraine war and other global hotspots; and the outlook for investment in decarbonization and clean energy. Meanwhile, an editorial titled “President-elect Trump must not threaten the stability of the world” outlines Trump’s threats to free expression and democracy and his opposition to resisting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, warning, among other things, that it could encourage China to take Taiwan by force. It concludes by urging Japan’s government to work with other like-minded countries to strengthen international cooperation, while recognizing that “Japan has no alternative to strengthening its alliance with the United States, no matter who becomes president” – though Japan should assume that “the US’s ‘inward looking orientation’ will not change easily.”
The center-left Asahi Shimbun, while more interested in explaining the Trump phenomenon to its readers (such as the role of anger and social divisions in fueling Trump’s return), reached similar conclusions to Nikkei, noting in a piece on its front page:
Mr. Trump’s next administration will be even more protectionist, more isolationist, and more unilateralist than his first. His administration’s disregard for the rule of law and governing as the power is everything, will harm the norms for the maintenance of order at home and abroad. This will give nothing but a favorable environment for China and Russia, considered to be despotic.
Even the right-wing Sankei Shimbun, more sympathetic to Trump than other Japanese dailies, nevertheless urged the president-elect in its editorial to focus on working together with other democracies to defend “the international order founded on freedom, democracy, and the ‘rule of law’ that is threatened by autocratic countries” instead of looking inward to do battle with domestic enemies.
These are, in short, anxious times across the political spectrum in Japan. No one knows quite what to expect from president-elect who has demanded that US allies (and Taiwan) pay the US “protection money,” a president who – as the Japanese media’s reporting notes – will be less constrained than he was during his first term.
It is not immediately clear how Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru will approach a US president whose transactional, “America First” approach to the world is a fundamental departure from the focus on upholding what former prime minister Kishida Fumio called a “free and open international order,” which, as Japan’s 2022 national security strategy recognized, was indispensable for the prosperity and security of the Japanese people.
Ishiba offered his “heartfelt congratulations” to Trump on Wednesday, stating that he wanted to work with Trump to take the US-Japan alliance and the bilateral relationships to “ever greater heights.” For now, Ishiba is likely to follow the late Abe Shinzō’s playbook for working with Trump. The prime minister is exploring a trip to the US for a meeting with the president-elect later in November, following a trip to South America for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and G20 summits. He will no doubt use this trip not only to forge a personal relationship with the president-elect but also to show Trump the ways in which Japan is contributing more to its own defense and to allied efforts as well as how Japan continues to be the leading investor in the US. The Japanese government more broadly will also rely on its patient work building ties with potential Trump administration staffers and congressional Republicans – Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), ambassador to Japan during Trump’s first term has been mentioned as a possible secretary of state, which would at least mean a familiar face for Tokyo – to avert some of the worst-case scenarios for Japan under a second Trump administration.
But even as Ishiba attempts to replicate Abe’s feat, it is likely to go differently for two reasons.
First, Ishiba is not Abe, particularly the Abe who went to Trump Tower to meet with Trump immediately after the 2016 presidential election. Not only was Abe more of a natural at personal diplomacy – a earnest friendliness that he either inherited or learned from his father Shintarō – but that Abe was practically at the height of his powers when he went to Trump Tower. With Kōmeitō, he commanded a supermajority in the House of Representatives, and, together with smaller parties, had just won enough seats in the House of Councillors to put constitutional revision in reach. His approval ratings had recovered from the national security legislation debate in 2015. He was not yet facing the influence-peddling scandals that would weigh on his support during his final years in office.
Ishiba, by contrast, not only does not have Abe’s experience at personal diplomacy and is a more cerebral politician. His domestic situation is precarious, lacking not only a supermajority for the ruling coalition but any majority at all. He needs the cooperation of opposition parties to perform the basic functions of government; the opposition will have more control of lower house committees, slowing the work of government. His government’s popularity may well be the lowest for a government that is only just over a month old. And while Abe was an experienced statesman – and golfer – by November 2016, Ishiba is new to the premiership, is not experienced at summit diplomacy, and may be less of natural at the personal diplomacy at which Abe excelled. Unlike Abe, he is also the head of a divided party that is questioning his ability to manage the challenge, particularly Abe’s acolytes on the LDP’s right wing who are questioning how Ishiba will work with Trump. When Ishiba meets with Trump, he will not only be trying to impress the president-elect; he will also be trying to convince a domestic audience, particularly in his own party, that he can build a partnership with him. If he is unconvincing, it is possible that the LDP could move to replace him sooner rather than later.
Of course, the other major difference is that the newly elected Trump is not the Trump of 2016 and 2017, when the Abe-Trump relationship was at its peak.1 As Trump grew more comfortable in the presidency, the impact of Abe’s personal relationship clearly receded, as Trump pursued personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even as Abe repeatedly called him and implored him to keep Japan’s interests in mind and then threatened Japan with automobile tariffs to convince Japan to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement that Abe had resisted. Now, Ishiba will face a Trump vindicated by his electoral victory, determined to complete the unfinished business of his first term, and seemingly less constrained by Republican foreign policy elites who might make the case for a gentler approach to Japan. It is possible, of course, that some in the second Trump administration will recognize Japan as an indispensable partner in strategic competition with China and will steer Trump’s attention away from Ishiba and Japan. But there is little reason at this point to expect a perfect repeat of 2016-2017 or that Ishiba will have an easy time evading Trump’s determination to raise tariffs on all imports or make US security guarantees more conditional.
The fact is that Japan faces a genuine “Trump shock” this time. The challenge to the international order identified by Japan’s dailies will not spare Japan, and will roil its politics, its economy, and its foreign policy as it faces a new US president who, as he said in his victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday, 6 November, “We have to put our country first for at least a period of time.” Tokyo, having weathered Trump’s first presidency and then worked with the Biden administration to build a new global partnership, should brace for something entirely different.
will the transactional Nippon/US Steel deal be a precursor of positive events to follow between U.S. and Japan?The united steelworkers may not be opposed now the election season is ended and Nippon is a much lower carbon based producer of steel--a very positive outcome for Nippon---steel is only a strategic asset in a transactional sense