U.S. President Donald Trump is considering visiting Japan around November for the first time since taking office as he travels to Southeast Asian countries for regional summits, Kyodo News learned Thursday from a person close to the U.S. administration.

The president's visit to Japan will be "before or after" he attends the meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to be held in Vietnam and the East Asia Summit to be held in the Philippines, said Ado Machida, who was a senior member of Trump's transition team and is still affecting policymaking from outside.

Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held their first official summit in the United States in February and have kept in regular contact as North Korea stepped up its nuclear and missile threats.

Machida, a Japanese-American who has access to the White House and stays in contact with Japanese lawmakers, also said in an interview that he expects Japan to play a bigger role in security issues and to further open up its markets — issues that could be discussed between the two leaders when they meet.

On Abe's recent proposal to revise the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution to give more legal backing to the Self-Defense Forces, he said, "The United States should not instigate (Japan) to do so, but I think Mr. Trump is thinking that he wants to support it."

Abe's proposal has been contentious at home. The current Constitution has never been revised since it went into effect in 1947 and people against an amendment are concerned that any revision of Article 9 could lead Japan to step away from its postwar pacifism.