Trump calls Ishiba, boasts about Mideast trip, pitches F-47
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba with President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 7 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Japanese government officials are trying to determine the purpose behind U.S. President Donald Trump's sudden phone call to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Was Trump setting the stage for demands that Japan buy U.S. fighter jets? Was he trying to get closer to someone he believes is a like-minded leader?
Or was the U.S. president just seeking someone to stroke his ego?
According to Ishiba administration officials, the U.S. side, via the National Security Secretariat, approached Ishiba on the morning of May 23 and said, 'U.S. President Trump has asked, 'Can we talk in a few hours?''
That exchange occurred just before Japan's top trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, left for the United States for talks on Trump's tariffs.
Several senior Japanese government officials said they feared Trump would strengthen his demands that Japan import more U.S. agricultural products or would flat out reject Japanese requests to lower the tariffs.
However, when the phone call began at 11 a.m., Trump's tone was so relaxed that the Japanese side was taken aback.
'It was as if (Trump) was lying down and talking,' a senior official at the prime minister's office said.
Trump gave a rundown of his recent trip to the Middle East and praised himself for his 'great accomplishments.'
Ishiba chimed in, saying Trump is committed to peace.
Trump then said he would like to further strengthen the military to achieve peace, to which Ishiba agreed was a very good idea.
The topic in this friendly and casual conversation then shifted from the Middle East to U.S.-made fighter jets, officials said.
Trump mentioned the F-47, the sixth-generation fighter jet manufactured by Boeing that was announced in March.
He said the '47' in 'F-47' is a good number, and asked Ishiba to agree with him.
The F-47, which will replace the F-22, and is believed to be named in honor of Trump, the 47th president of the United States.
Trump also praised the F-22, which the United States has never tried to sell to Japan, and the F-55, which is considered an upgraded version of the F-35 fighter.
He said the United States has such great fighter jets and asked Ishiba if he would like to take a look at them.
Trump added that he will get 'the best' for Japan, the officials said.
Sources said Trump is aware of Japan's joint development of a fighter jet with Britain and Italy.
However, Trump only causally asked Ishiba if Japan was interested in buying U.S.-made fighter jets, officials said. He never urged Japan to purchase them in conjunction with the tariff negotiations.
The topic of fighter jets may have come up because during the Japan-U.S. summit in February, Ishiba showed interest in the C-17, a large U.S.-made transport aircraft, officials said.
'Trump must have thought, 'Well, (Ishiba) would understand (aircraft),' so he went into the in-depth exchange,' one official surmised.
However, Japan would have to overcome a number of obstacles to change its fighter aircraft models, such as pilot training and maintenance.
For this reason, the Japanese government is taking a cautious approach to Trump's comments about fighter jets. At this point, there are no plans for Ishiba to inspect military aircraft in the United States, sources said.
Although the main purpose of Trump's trip to the Middle East was to secure business deals, the key issue in the region is peace, something that Trump has failed to secure so far.
'When Trump returns from the Middle East, he will be criticized by his opponents. That's probably why he said, 'Let's call (Ishiba) who will listen to me,'' a Japanese government official said.
Ishiba himself is becoming increasingly confident that he and Trump have chemistry, the official said.
During the 45-minute phone call, Trump and Ishiba agreed to hold a summit in conjunction with the G-7 conference to be held in Canada in mid-June.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NHK
14 minutes ago
- NHK
Trump accuses China of 'violating' trade agreement with US
US President Donald Trump says China has "violated" a trade agreement with his nation. Trump posted on social media on Friday, "I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation." He said, "Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual." He added that everyone was happy and that was the good news. Trump then said there was bad news, adding, "China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US." But the president did not specify how China violated the agreement. Trump was later asked about this post by reporters at the White House. He repeated that China had violated the agreement and expressed confidence that he will speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump said, "Hopefully, we'll work that out." Trump's comments came after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Thursday that trade talks with China were "a bit stalled." The US and China agreed this month to cut additional tariffs on each other by 115 percentage points. Washington is calling for more market access and reducing the bilateral trade deficit. Trump is apparently dissatisfied with Beijing's response, and concerns are growing that the trade tensions could escalate again, depending on future negotiations.
Yomiuri Shimbun
16 minutes ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Trump's Week Shows the Risks of His Full-Speed-Ahead Approach
Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony for the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, at the White House on Wednesday. His sweeping tariffs that have upended the global economy? Two federal courts struck them down this week, though by Thursday afternoon an appeals court had at least temporarily put them back in place. His boasts that he could rapidly end wars? Russia continues to escalate attacks on Ukraine. But White House officials suggested Thursday that he was on the cusp of announcing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. His Big Beautiful Bill? His former wingman, Elon Musk, sharply criticized it as he departed from his official post. But by Friday the two men were in the Oval Office together, lavishing praise and marveling at their friendship. President Donald Trump's second term has been marked by volatility, brought about in part by his insistence on bulling forward in search of maximum gain, even if that heightens the risk of ultimate failure. This week crystalized just how rapidly his fortunes can rise and fall. The confluence of the court ruling against his tariffs and Musk's criticism of his sweeping domestic policy bill highlighted the possibility that some of Trump's signature plans could collapse all at once. In the midst of that, a president who hates to be perceived as weak and relishes his command of social media was publicly confronted with ridicule on Wall Street, where financial traders mocked his repeated pullbacks on tariffs with a trending meme: TACO, which stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' Still, Trump remains resilient, and in a week that in some ways appeared to be a low point of his presidency, somehow the TACO keeps morphing back into Teflon Don. 'He has hit a couple big bumps in the road,' said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally. 'From Trump's standpoint, he just has to fight through all this. He's being very bold and pushing the margins. And when you're pushing the margins, you occasionally run into trouble.' To those working in this White House – one accustomed to unfriendly court rulings, sneering from Wall Street, and an off-the-cuff Musk – it all had the feel of just another week. With Republicans holding power of both the House and the Senate – and with Trump holding power over almost his entire party – he has faced few outside challenges since taking office. In the opening days of his tenure, he fired inspectors general across the government, limiting the watchdogs who might launch investigations. He threatened the political careers of Republicans who criticized him or wouldn't vote for the loyalists he nominated to Cabinet posts. Democrats have been criticizing each other for being rudderless and leaderless, consumed more with infighting over their views of Joe Biden's cognitive health than on whether or how to counter Trump. That has left the courts and the financial markets as the two major checks on Trump's power. Administration officials have tried to placate investors, but in the aftermath of unfavorable rulings, they repeatedly have lashed out at 'unelected judges,' whom they accuse of thwarting the president. Much of the rhetoric Thursday was aimed at the U.S. Court of International Trade, which on Wednesday struck down most of Trump's tariffs on imported goods. The president, in attempting to implement his flurry of import taxes, had invoked a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which grants presidents wide powers to deal with economic emergencies. The court ruled that his actions had far exceeded his lawful powers under that statute. 'We are living under a judicial tyranny,' Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of some of Trump's ambitious proposals, wrote Thursday morning on X. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the decision 'another example of judicial overreach' and said the three judges who struck down the tariffs, one of whom was appointed by Trump, 'brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump, to stop him from carrying out the mandate that the American people gave him.' 'The courts should have no role here,' she said. 'There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.' A few hours later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that it would grant the Trump administration's request to pause the lower court's ruling and allow his tariffs to continue for now. And on Thursday night, Trump lashed out at Leonard Leo, who played a prominent role in helping select judicial nominees, including three Supreme Court picks, during Trump's first term. He called him a 'sleazebag' and suggested that he gave bad advice on some of the judicial nominees who are now ruling against him. Trump's tariff proposals have caused a whipsaw of policies, with 145 percent tariffs initially imposed on China quickly lowered to 30 percent with a 90-day pause after a steep decline in financial markets. Trump threatened the European Union with 50 percent tariffs starting in June, then backed off over the weekend and delayed them until July 9 to provide more time for negotiations. His willingness to back away from his initial proposals spawned a meme earlier this month when a columnist in the Financial Times wrote about Wall Street's emerging TACO trade theory, which highlights how the president backs away from his threats when markets go down. Trump reacted angrily when asked about the term during an event on Wednesday in the Oval Office. 'Don't ever say what you said,' he told the reporter. 'To me, that's the nastiest question.' He defended his approach on tariffs, saying that he deliberately starts with a 'ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit.' 'You call that chickening out?' Trump said. 'It's called negotiation.' A few minutes later, he returned again to the topic. 'They wouldn't be over here today negotiating if I didn't put a 50 percent tariff on,' he said. 'The sad thing is now when I make a deal with them, it's something much more reasonable. They'll say, 'Oh, he was chicken, he was chicken.' That's so unbelievable. I usually have the opposite problem. They say you're too tough.' Trump this week also lost one of his chief allies when Musk formally left his position. On his way out, he broke in a significant way with Trump and most Republicans by criticizing the president's spending bill, which includes large tax cuts and would add trillions of dollars over the next decade to the towering national debt. 'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk said in an interview with CBS News. 'I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,' Musk added, 'but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion.' In an interview with The Washington Post this week, Musk also said that his efforts to cut the size of the federal government proved far tougher than he had expected. 'The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,' he said. 'I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.' Trump – who in February sat alongside Musk for a Fox News interview, with each man lavishing praise upon the other – hosted Musk in the Oval Office for a news conference on Friday afternoon. And while he marked Musk's last day as a special government employee, he clearly did not want his billionaire buddy to depart. 'Elon is really not leaving,' Trump said, before presenting Musk with a golden key inside a wooden box. 'He's going to be back and forth.' Musk's criticisms this week stood out because from the first few months of the president's tenure, the two were inseparable. Trump bought a Tesla after staging a car show on the South Lawn of the White House. Musk recounted to reporters the times that the president invited him to sleep over in the Lincoln bedroom and help himself to a tub full of caramel Häagen-Dazs ice cream in the kitchen. Leavitt dismissed any criticism of the One Big Beautiful Bill – as it is officially known – and, unlike Musk, said that it could be big as well as beautiful. 'The president is very proud of the One Big Beautiful Bill, and he wants to see it pass,' she said. 'We thank him for his service. We thank him for getting DOGE off of the ground, and the efforts to cut waste, fraud and abuse will continue.' On the foreign policy front, while Trump's recent trip to the Middle East won a range of new business deals and showed him at his most comfortable, he has continued to be vexed by conflicts that he has little control over. On Thursday, White House officials fanned reports that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was imminent. Leavitt on Thursday confirmed that Israel had signed off on a ceasefire proposal that the Trump administration had presented, and said officials were awaiting approval from Hamas. 'Those discussions are continuing, and we hope that a ceasefire in Gaza will take place so we can return all of the hostages home,' she said. But Trump has struggled to halt the war between Russia and Ukraine, a conflict he used to say he would solve within the first 24 hours of his presidency. Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated attacks on Ukraine, openly challenging Trump, who has several times told him he must stop so that negotiations could start. And Trump, who has often deflected when he wants to buy time, has adopted a familiar refrain. Asked on April 24 about continuing to help Ukraine, he said, 'You can ask that question in two weeks.' Asked on April 27 whether he trusted Putin, he said, 'We'll let you know in about two weeks.' Less than two weeks later, on May 4, he was asked whether he had misread Putin. 'I'll tell you about in a month from now, or two weeks from now.' Two weeks later, on May 19, he was asked whether Ukraine was doing enough. 'I'd rather tell you in about two weeks,' he said. Asked again on Wednesday whether Putin was doing enough to end the war, he gave a now-rote answer: 'I'll let you know in about two weeks.'
Kyodo News
18 minutes ago
- Kyodo News
Kyodo News Digest: May 30, 2025
KYODO NEWS - 14 hours ago - 23:00 | All, Japan, World The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News. ---------- China agrees to begin steps to resume Japanese seafood imports: Tokyo TOKYO - Japan's government said Friday that China has agreed to begin procedures to resume imports of Japanese seafood, lifting a ban imposed after the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. Chinese authorities are expected to issue a public notice easing the blanket ban that has been in place since August 2023 and soon open registration for Japanese facilities that process and preserve marine products, sources familiar with the matter said. ---------- Japan, U.S. tariff negotiators to hold another round of talks WASHINGTON - Japan's chief tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, will hold another round of talks on Friday with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as the two governments explore a possible agreement to be reached by their leaders next month. On the eve of the talks, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump by phone, telling reporters afterward that each side was able to gain a better understanding of the views held by the other. ---------- Japan Diet begins debate on dual surname bill for 1st time in 28 yrs TOKYO - Japan's parliament on Friday began its first deliberations in 28 years on legislation that would give married couples the option of keeping different surnames. The passage of any of the three bills submitted separately by three opposition parties, however, looks unlikely during the current Diet session through late June, despite growing public acceptance of their push to change the longstanding rule requiring married couples to share a single family name. ---------- Report says N. Korea illegally gave 100 ballistic missiles to Russia SEOUL - North Korea provided Russia with at least 100 ballistic missiles last year in exchange for air defense systems and electronic jamming equipment, in clear violation of U.N. sanctions, the first report by an international monitoring body showed Thursday. The report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, led by Japan, the United States and South Korea, stressed that both countries are engaging in illegal arms transfers, urging the international community to strengthen monitoring and information-sharing efforts. ---------- Japan PM may attend NATO summit in late June in the Netherlands TOKYO - Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering attending a NATO summit meeting to be held in late June in the Netherlands, government sources said Friday, as Japan moves to demonstrate its closer ties with the trans-Atlantic defense alliance. If Ishiba attends, it will be the fourth straight year the sitting Japanese leader has done so. This year's gathering will be held on June 24 and 25 in The Hague. ---------- Japan's former Princess Mako gives birth to 1st child TOKYO - Mako Komuro, Crown Prince Fumihito's eldest daughter who married out of the imperial family, gave birth to her first child, the Imperial Household Agency said Friday. The 33-year-old mother and the child -- the first grandchild of the crown prince and the first great-grandchild of former Emperor Akihito -- are both in good health, a source close to the matter said. ---------- Japan, Bangladesh agree on defense equipment, tech transfer pact TOKYO - Japan and Bangladesh on Friday agreed in principle to conclude a pact for the transfer of defense equipment and technology, reiterating their commitment to stability in the Indo-Pacific region as China's influence grows, the Japanese government said. In a joint statement after talks in Tokyo, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of Bangladesh's interim government, said they have instructed negotiators to speed up discussions on an economic partnership agreement. ---------- Japan eyes more rice exports as domestic consumption set to decline TOKYO - The Japanese government on Friday vowed to explore new overseas markets and provide support for more efficient production as part of efforts to increase rice exports in response to an envisioned long-term contraction in domestic consumption. In the annual white paper on food and agriculture for fiscal 2024 approved by the Cabinet, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries recommends increased rice exports despite the Japanese government recently introducing measures to curb soaring domestic prices, driven in part by shortages. Video: Japan Business Federation appoints new chief
