In his presidential campaign last year, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to scrap trade deals that gave unfair advantages to other nations and replace them with new ones that would revitalize the U.S. economy and bring jobs back home.
One of the Trump administration's first major tests of its confrontational approach to trade will bring Vice President Mike Pence head-to-head with his Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso, the pugnacious deputy prime minister with a habit of speaking his mind.
Pence and Aso meet in Japan next month for the first in a series of talks on economic relations between the world's largest and third-largest economies.