Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, made a stopover in New York to meet with Trump in a hastily arranged meeting at Trump Tower just over a week after the 2016 election.
The close relationship between the pair, forged over hours spent on the golf course, helped smooth over several issues that surfaced during his first term such as trade tensions between the allies.
Ahead of the 2024 election, Japanese officials had been stepping up efforts to rekindle relations with people close to Trump, fearing that he may again hit Japan with protectionist trade measures such as tariffs on steel, and revive demands for it to pay more toward the cost of stationing US forces in the country if he returned to office.
Asked about the latter issue on Thursday, Ishiba said he did not discuss it in his telephone call with Trump. “Rather than focus on monetary amounts, we would like to vigorously discuss the strengthening of the Japan-US alliance from various perspectives,” he added.
Ishiba congratulated Trump on Wednesday evening for his election victory, expressing hope to “work closely with Mr Trump to take the Japan-US alliance and Japan-US relationship to new heights”.
Japan and the United States are each other’s top foreign investors, and 54,000 US military personnel are stationed in Japan, mostly in the southern region of Okinawa.
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