US to defend Japan on Senkaku isles row
WASHINGTON: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump were set to confirm the Japan-US security treaty applies to the Japanese-administered Senkaku islands during their first summit meeting after press time last night, a source familiar with bilateral relations said on Thursday.
The affirmation, to be made in a document the two governments are planning to issue after the White House summit, means the US will defend Japan in the event that Beijing attempts to seize the group of uninhabited East China Sea islets claimed by China and Taiwan.
Earlier on Thursday, a senior US official said: “I would expect, certainly, for you to hear on that subject [the Senkaku issue] and in concrete terms that President Trump is committed to that treaty.”
While affirming a robust Japan-US security alliance, Mr Trump was also likely to raise the issues of trade in automobiles and exchange rates — areas in which he has expressed frustration against Japan — during yesterday’s meeting at the White House, the official told reporters.
Article 5 of the bilateral security treaty “does apply to the Senkakus”, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mr Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, became the first US president to make such a commitment in public in April 2014.
“We oppose any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japan’s administration of the islands,” the official said, taking aim at China’s repeated intrusion into Japanese territorial waters around the islands.
However, the official said Mr Abe and Mr Trump are unlikely to discuss the issue of sovereignty over the islets, known as Diaoyu in China and Tiaoyutai in Taiwan. Beijing claims it has “undisputable sovereignty” over them.
Referring to Washington’s sizeable trade deficit with Tokyo, the official did not rule out the possibility that Mr Trump will refer to what he regards as currency devaluation by Japan for unfair trade advantage, an allegation Japan denies.
As for automobile trade, the official said the industry is of “high interest” to Mr Trump and it will be “an important topic of conversation” between the
leaders of the world’s biggest and thirdlargest economies.
Mr Trump has called Japan’s automobile trade practices “not fair”, saying, “They [Japan] do things to us that make it impossible to sell cars in Japan.”
Japanese officials, however, said there are no tariffs on foreign car imports into Japan and that there are no discriminatory non-tariff barriers, either.
They also said Japanese automakers have invested in the United States and created many jobs there.
The US administration official suggested Mr Trump may propose to Mr Abe a bilateral free trade agreement in place of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free trade agreement he abandoned last month.
Mr Trump has made clear that in a bilateral agreement “you can negotiate terms that are more favourable to the United States than you can in a multilateral agreement”, the official said.
The envisaged Japan-US FTA could cover the automobile sector, which the official called “an iconic and critical part of the Japanese economy” and the politically sensitive agriculture sector.
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Trump expressed eagerness to introduce a highspeed railway system in the US. Mr Abe is reportedly considering proposing to Mr Trump a bilateral job-creation policy package that includes high-speed railway construction and other infrastructure development projects in the United States.
“We have obsolete airports. We have obsolete trains. We have bad roads. We’re going to change all of that,” Mr Trump said in a meeting with airline industry executives. “Somebody was saying yesterday to me that you go to China, you go to Japan, they have fast trains all over the place. We don’t have one.”
“I don’t want to compete with your business, but we don’t have one fast train,” he said.
After the Oval Office talks, Mr Trump and Mr Abe are today scheduled to travel to Palm Beach in Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago vacation estate, and play golf together.
Mr Abe arrived in Washington on Thursday evening (yesterday morning, Thai time).