This month in the White House’s Rose Garden, as he held up a placard showing the global wave of tariffs he wanted to impose, President Trump paused to fondly recall a fallen friend.
“The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo, was — Shinzo Abe — he was a fantastic man,” Mr. Trump said during the tariff announcement on April 2. “He was, unfortunately, taken from us, assassination.”
The words of praise for Mr. Abe, who was gunned down three years ago during a campaign speech, did not stop Mr. Trump from slapping a 24 percent tariff on products imported from Japan. But they were unusual, nonetheless, coming from a president who has had few nice things to say these days about other allies, particularly Canada and Europe.
Mr. Trump has also allowed Japan to become one of the first countries to come to Washington to bargain for a possible reprieve from his sweeping tariffs, many of which he has put on hold for 90 days. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump joined the first meeting in the capital between a negotiator handpicked by Japan’s current prime minister and a U.S. team that also included the secretaries of treasury and commerce.
“A Great Honor to have just met with the Japanese Delegation on Trade. Big Progress!” the president posted on his social media site.
Japan’s place at the front of the line reflects the different approach that Mr. Trump has taken toward the nation. While the president still accuses it of unfair trade policies and an unequal security relationship, he also praises it in the same breath as a close ally, an ancient culture and a savvy negotiator.
In a post before the talks began, Mr. Trump said they would include “the cost of military support,” suggesting he would press Japan to pay more for the current basing of 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan. “Hopefully something can be worked out which is good (GREAT!) for Japan and the USA!” the president wrote.
Japan holds a special, if not always fond, place in Mr. Trump’s thinking. Its meteoric economic rise in the 1980s shaped his current views of global trade, including his passion for tariffs. Some observers say the president has maintained a love-hate relationship with Japan that leads him to criticize the country while also admiring it — and reveling in the flattery from its recent leaders.
“Trump’s behavior toward Japan looks quite contradictory, but it’s actually very consistent,” said Glen S. Fukushima, a former U.S. trade official who has watched U.S.-Japan relations for more than four decades. “He has a lot of admiration and respect for Japan, which he thinks has been really shrewd in hoodwinking the Americans.”
While the president last week suspended the broadest tariffs after financial markets went into free fall, Japan still faces a new 10 percent base tariff that Mr. Trump has imposed on most imports to America. A few days later, the White House amended its terms again by sparing smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics from tariffs. Yet there also remain higher levies on steel and aluminum and a 25 percent tariff on autos, which could hit Japan’s economy hard.
Japan has reacted with feelings of betrayal and bewilderment to the tariffs, which targeted America’s friends and foes alike. After failed diplomatic efforts to win Japan an exemption, Shigeru Ishiba, the current prime minister, declared the tariffs a “national crisis.”
But at the same time, Mr. Trump has given Japan more privileged treatment. When Mr. Ishiba wanted to discuss a possible deal to reduce tariffs, Mr. Trump took the call.
“Spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate!” Mr. Trump wrote Monday on his social media platform. True to form, the president then immediately shifted into a complaint that Japan has “treated the U.S. very poorly on Trade.”
“They don’t take our cars, but we take MILLIONS of theirs,” he wrote.
While flip-flopping is not unusual for Mr. Trump’s off-the-cuff style, his split view of Japan goes much deeper, extending back to his early days as a Manhattan real estate developer. Even then, he spoke of Japan as both a valued customer for his buildings and a source of financing for new deals, while also railing against the unequal balance of trade.
“America is being ripped off,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in 1988. “We’re a debtor nation, and we have to tax, we have to tariff, we have to protect this country.”
In 2016, those attitudes helped carry him to victory among voters disillusioned with globalization. But before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Abe was the first world leader to visit the president-elect in Trump Tower, where he applauded Mr. Trump’s election win and presented him with a gold-plated golf club. Mr. Trump, who was still being viewed warily by other world leaders, never forgot the gesture, said Shinsuke J. Sugiyama, who was Japan’s ambassador to the United States during the first Trump administration.
“Abe took a risk by being the first world leader to visit him,” Mr. Sugiyama said. “This gave Trump a whole different image of Japan.”
Japan’s current prime minister has tried to use that same playbook during the second Trump administration, but with mixed results. Mr. Abe’s widow, Akie Abe, had dinner with Mr. Trump and Melania Trump in January at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
A month later, Mr. Ishiba became one of the first heads of state to visit Mr. Trump at the White House, playing up Japan’s huge investments in American business and industry. He also mentioned the July 2024 assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, telling the U.S. president, “You were one chosen by God.”
Mr. Ishiba earned priority access to Mr. Trump for his negotiator, a close political ally named Ryosei Akazawa, who will seek an exemption from Mr. Trump’s tariffs, most likely by pledging to buy more American food, weapons and energy. The U.S. team may press Japan to weaken its currency, which would drive down the cost of American imports, and also to pay more for maintaining the U.S. military bases in Japan.
“By being first to bend a knee, Abe allowed Trump to say, ‘Look, Japan was laughing at us, but now that I’m in power, they come to see me,’” said Jennifer M. Miller, a historian of U.S.-Japan relations at Dartmouth College. “Ishiba is hoping the old playbook will still work.”
Martin Fackler is the acting Tokyo bureau chief for The Times.
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