Former US president Donald Trump has won the first few of the Republican Party’s US presidential primaries, and it looks like he could keep winning. Obviously, Trump is making a comeback and it would be difficult to stop him. Many governments have started to get ready for his return.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is to visit the US in April. Tokyo has been in contact with Trump’s team through the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) network. LDP Vice President Taro Aso visited Washington last month, paving the way for Kishida’s upcoming trip. Aso met with former US ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, who served during the Trump administration. The two sides have continued to communicate since then.
Aso served as Japanese deputy prime minister from 2012 to 2021 under former Japanese prime ministers Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga. When Abe met with Trump, Aso was by their side many times. The only other Japanese politician than Abe that Trump could recall is Aso, Asahi Shimbun said.
Abe and Trump held official bilateral meetings 14 times, in addition to 37 conference calls. They also played five rounds of golf while discussing political issues and foreign affairs. Abe’s relationship with Trump was a diplomatic legacy that he left behind. His work would allow Kishida to cope with Trump’s possible return in a much easier way.
On Nov. 17, 2016, less than 10 days after Trump was elected as the US president, Abe managed to meet with Trump when he was on his way to attend an APEC summit in Peru. Abe brought a gold golf driver as a gift for Trump and became the first foreign leader to meet with Trump. Abe clearly knew that Trump followed a one-person decisionmaking model, and hence strove to consolidate his personal relationship with Trump.
In May 2019, Trump visited Japan for the second time during his presidency. He became the first foreign leader to be received in Japan’s Reiwa — “beautiful harmony” — era. As soon as Trump arrived, Abe drove a cart and took Trump to a golf course. They played golf together, with Japanese legendary golf player Aoki Isao accompanying them. The climax of Trump’s visit came at the Ryogoku Kokugikan, a sumo wrestling arena in Tokyo, where he and his wife watched the match from a sofa placed at ringside. As the sumo ring was called, Trump presented a specially made, 30kg US President’s Cup to the winner. Abe and Trump’s intimate relationship allowed Japan and the US to negotiate with one another in a congenial way.
After stepping down, Abe revealed that in his first meeting with then-US president-elect Trump, he persuaded Trump to keep the deployment of US troops in Asia and take part in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Abe’s objective was to intensify the security alliance between Washington and Tokyo, along with which he proclaimed that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-US alliance.”
Similar to Japan’s move, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently appointed two ministers to observe the US presidential election. They have been vigorously discussing strategies to cope with Trump’s potential comeback. Canada and Japan are two of the US’ most steadfast allies, and they dare not to loosen up. Instead, they have been considering the issue very seriously. Taiwan should certainly follow suit. President-elect William Lai (賴清德) and vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) should keep up with the situation.
Chen Yung-chang is a company manager.
Translated by Emma Liu
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
A report by the US-based Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday last week warned that China is operating illegal oil drilling inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙群島), marking a sharp escalation in Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. The report said that, starting in July, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp installed 12 permanent or semi-permanent oil rig structures and dozens of associated ships deep inside Taiwan’s EEZ about 48km from the restricted waters of Pratas Island in the northeast of the South China Sea, islands that are home to a Taiwanese garrison. The rigs not only typify
RSS