Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence are expected to tackle a raft of topics when the two nations meet Tuesday for the start of their first high-level economic dialogue since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump in January.
But in what is to be the first in a series of meetings, speculation is rife on the Japanese side that the talks will be a mere formality and yield little in the way of concrete results.
Moreover, the fact that the U.S. government is still in a kind of transition process and widely seen as unprepared for the talks, analysts say, presents an opportunity for Tokyo to gain the upper hand by steering the conversation away from two politically sensitive topics it would rather not discuss in detail: currencies and trade deficits tied to automobiles.