Ishiba will finally meet Trump, but expectations need to be kept low

After numerous political, financial and business leaders, including the late-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s widow, Akie Abe, Liberal Democratic Party Vice President Taro Aso and SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son, met with U.S. President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will finally travel to the U.S. for talks on Friday.

The announced objective is to "strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Japan."

Following Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya's meeting with new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio following the presidential inauguration, the objective escalated to "take the relationship to the highest level." Ishiba also hopes to establish a strong personal relationship of mutual trust with the U.S. president.

His long-time rival Shinzo Abe's relationship with Trump is the ideal but an unfair comparison or expectation. Their relationship was exceedingly rare among U.S. and Japanese leaders, given that it continued even after Abe left office until his death.

Even more remarkably, private contacts continued between Trump, first lady Melania and Akie Abe. Mrs. Abe not only visited the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago in December but was also invited to attend the inauguration in January as a special friend of the first lady.

Ishiba needed to aim lower than that, but he badly undershot the mark.

Since Trump's electoral win in November, Ishiba has only managed one direct contact: a perfunctory five-minute telephone call just days after the vote.

The trip later this week also comes at an awkward time for Ishiba. Parliament is in session and under his tenuous minority government, he is facing a harsh environment in achieving the minimum necessary objectives for this legislative session, including the passing of the 2025 fiscal year national budget. With the critical chair of parliament’s Budget Committee in the hands of the opposition, this is hardly a given.

Some of the opposition is intent on using the Budget Committee for political purposes to continue to focus attention on the political funding scandal that has plagued the LDP.

Other opposition politicians and groups are intent on selling their votes to approve the budget only if the Ishiba's party accepts legislative proposals that will increase their standing as Japan looks toward another national election in July.

The calendar is another major challenge as, by law, the budget must be in place before the start of the next fiscal year on April 1. Given the mandate that the Upper House has thirty days to debate the budget once it clears the Lower House, Ishiba has until March 2 to reach a final agreement with the opposition.

Customarily, Japanese prime ministers avoid overseas travel during this period to prioritize such a critical matter. Failure to pass a national budget would likely lead to a successful no-confidence vote that would topple Ishiba's administration. That would either trigger a new LDP presidential or national election for which the LDP is utterly unprepared.

The other consideration is that a failed meeting with Trump would provide the opposition parties with another issue to run out the clock needed to pass a budget. Or, possibly worse, force a desperate Ishiba into making ill-conceived compromises, such as with defense spending, that lose him support within the LDP.

One can imagine the opposition gleefully calculating the possibility of another national election where they can gain a majority and sweep to power. Ishiba has placed himself and the government at considerable risk because of his dithering over the Trump meeting that should have taken place in November.

Sadly, the outcome of the meeting is easy to predict. It's hard to imagine Ishiba and Trump developing a strong personal relationship — the two are like oil and water. Trump looked to Abe as a friend and adviser. Even today, Ishiba sees himself as the "anti-Abe."

Also, Ishiba's personality and communication style is the exact opposite of what works most effectively with Trump. In December, Ishiba sought advice from Aso and Son after they met Trump. They told him explicitly that he should stick to concise conclusions and to avoid the long, rambling explanations that Ishiba is prone to that would severely test Trump's patience. And Ishiba's reported response was, that is what “I am least good at.”

Another potential red flag is the messaging. Ishiba says he will explain to Trump how much his country invests in the U.S. and how strong an ally Japan is. Both points are true, but is Trump really unaware of that? Or will that approach of stating the obvious trigger the "transactional" Trump into raising the stakes?

It’s easy to predict that Trump will demand far greater investment in U.S.-based automotive production, pushing for Japanese plants to shift from Canada and Mexico to the U.S. He will also likely call for an additional $20 to $30 billion annually in liquefied natural gas and oil purchases, support for the proposed Alaska pipeline (a project close to his heart) and a doubling of Japan's defense spending from the 2024 estimate of 1.6% of gross domestic product to over 3%.

The proposed 2025 defense budget, if passed, is expected to increase by 9.4% over 2024 and reach between 1.7% and 1.8% of GDP on the way to hitting 2% by 2027.

Abe had an instinct for discussing the most challenging issues with Trump, resulting in a strong personal relationship; Ishiba seems headed to the exact opposite. Fortunately for the U.S. and Japan, whether the current leadership relationship is warm or passable does not truly matter.

Before Abe's extended term in office, Japan saw decades where there was a new prime minister just about every year. Many barely had time to even meet their U.S. counterparts, much less develop any rapport.

What makes the connection between Tokyo and Washington essentially impermeable to leadership changes is the vast network of direct links that have been built up over decades, including ties between government bureaucracies, politicians, military officials and commands, corporations, organizations, educational and research institutions and countless people-to-people relationships that remain unaffected by changes at the top.

Here’s the bottom line: The Trump-Ishiba meeting is likely to be awkward at best, with their personal connection as fragile as high-quality washi paper, but its impact will be more significant for Ishiba domestically and in determining how long he stays as prime minister, rather than for the "rock-solid" U.S.-Japan relationship.