MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today, Japan's prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, will be the first Asian leader to visit the White House in President Trump's second term. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Ishiba is expected to face pressure from President Trump to raise Japan's defense spending and lower its trade surplus with the U.S. Trump has harped on these points for more than three decades. Here he is talking to Oprah Winfrey in 1988.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets and everything. It's not free trade.
KUHN: Ishiba can try to curry favor with Trump by offering to buy more U.S. liquefied natural gas, and he can point to Japan's commitment to roughly double defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2027. But Brad Glosserman, deputy director of the Tama University Center for Rule-making Strategies in Tokyo, says Trump is likely to want more.
BRAD GLOSSERMAN: My sense is that the United States is now going to be asking for 3% at a minimum, and perhaps even more. That's going to be extremely difficult for the Japanese to do because of a weak prime minister with competing national policy priorities.
KUHN: Glosserman notes that Ishiba's party is in the minority in parliament, and defense hawks in his own party find him too moderate. Ishiba has long called for a more equal alliance with the U.S. Here's what Ishiba said just after President Trump's inauguration.
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PRIME MINISTER SHIGERU ISHIBA: (Speaking Japanese).
KUHN: "Japan has its own national interests, and the United States has its own national interests," he told reporters. "I would like to establish a relationship of trust through sincere discussions on how we can make the most of our bilateral relationship for world peace and the global economy." What neither Ishiba nor other Japanese officials will discuss publicly is their concern that the U.S. might move away from its commitment to the U.S.-Japan alliance. Yoshihide Soeya, a professor emeritus at Keio University in Tokyo, voices his concern.
YOSHIHIDE SOEYA: The Trump phenomenon is giving us a signal, a warning, that we should begin to think in a different sort of security paradigm.
KUHN: Soeya says Japan should cooperate more with other midsized Asian powers. He doesn't think the U.S. will turn its back on Asia, but given the direction in which America First nationalism and isolationism are currently heading, he says it might be wise for Japan to hedge its bets on its alliance with the U.S.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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