If Trump 1.0 is anything to go by, Trump 2.0 would be a period marked by disruptions and unpredictability for international relations. Many world leaders – America’s friends and foes alike – are especially jittery over a second Trump administration. Unlike the first Trump administration where Donald Trump was partially restrained by experienced types around him, the second Trump administration would comprise acolytes and a Republican Party forged in the mold of the MAGA movement. World leaders preparing to ‘Trump-proof’ their economy and security arrangements from an unbridled Trump administration may do well to learn from the example of Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan from 2012 to 2020.
Mr Abe is widely regarded as the ultimate Trump tamer. His statesmanship and charm offensive – most notably appealing to Mr Trump’s love for golf and hamburgers – shielded Japan from the brunt of Mr Trump’s rhetoric by keeping his good graces. This was particularly important for Japan as Mr Trump’s disdain of free trade and scepticism towards the value of defending fellow democracies could spell disaster for the country; as allies, America stations over 50,000 active-duty military personnel in Japan, as well as being their second largest trade partner.
The high stakes for Japan explain Mr Abe’s swift action. He became the first foreign leader to meet the President-elect in Trump Tower, just nine days after the 2016 election. There, he gifted Mr Trump a $3,755 gold-plated golf club and left with a red MAGA baseball cap and a golf shirt. Just a few weeks after President Trump was sworn into office in 2017, the two met again at Mar-a-Largo, his ritzy Florida residence, where they played golf and had dinner with their wives.
Tobias Harris, founder of Japan Foresight, a risk consultancy, comments in the New York Times that Mr Abe ‘moved quickly enough, he got the tone right, he knew how to talk to’ Mr Trump. ‘It’s hard to think of a leader who did quite as well.’ On Fuji Television Akira Amari, former Secretary General of Mr Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), called his dealings with Mr Trump ‘ingenious’.
Overall, the two met twenty times, had thirty-two phone calls, and played five rounds of golf together. Mr Abe always strived to be a reliable ear for Mr Trump on their frequent calls, at times twice a week. In his memoir, he recalls how, unlike President Obama, President Trump enjoyed long calls with him. ‘Mr Trump talks for an hour like it’s no big deal. On long calls, he’ll talk for an hour and a half. So much so, that sometimes even I get tired… The main business conversation ends in fifteen minutes, and for the rest of the call, around seventy or eighty per cent, he talks about golf or criticises other world leaders.’
Mr Trump’s discussion of fond memories with Mr Abe is in sharp contrast to some comments he had for European leaders. Having been called ‘a leader I can trust’ by Mr Trump, this is a clear testimony to Mr Abe’s strategy and its seeming success. The ties between the two leaders translated into close U.S.-Japanese ties during the first Trump administration. While Japan was the target of Mr Trump’s ire on the campaign trail, lampooning the United States’ trade deficit and disproportionate defence burdens shared with Japan, the rhetoric thawed once he was in the White House.
The United States remained a steadfast security partner for Japan under President Trump, assuaging Japanese fears of American reliability. He issued a credible statement in response to the North Korean missile test in February 2017, saying that ‘the United States of America is behind Japan, our great ally, 100 per cent.’ President Trump adopted the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) rhetoric, a doctrine conceived by Prime Minister Abe. The FOIP strategy is the conception of the Indo-Pacific (the Indo- is added in a nod to woo India) region in which countries with the shared values of freedom, market economy, and the rule of law band together in response to Chinese expansion.
On the economic front, Japan averted the once-feared tariff hike on its automobile exports in the landmark 2019 U.S.-Japan trade deal, as well as an above-TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) access level of American agricultural goods into the Japanese market. On their final call after Prime Minister Abe announced in resignation in August 2020, he recalls in his memoir, that President Trump told him that the United States may have conceded too much during their trade negotiations.
Perhaps some of Mr Abe’s interactions with Mr Trump may be dismissed as disingenuous pomp and flattery – exploiting Mr Trump’s vanity by buttering him up. Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper, reported that Mr Abe nominated Mr Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize[ET1] . He also named a sumo tournament trophy after him. However, it is also undeniable that there was a friendship between the two – ‘bromance’, even, as some have suggested. The effort and sincerity Mr Abe put into keeping their personal ties close are indicative of the pressure he must have felt to shield Japan from Mr Trump’s worse instincts.
There is more to learn from Mr Abe than taking golf lessons. His strength lies in his understanding of Mr Trump’s worldview and communication style.
‘Mr Trump questioned why the United States had to carry the burden of the Western countries.’ Mr Abe states in his memoir. He goes on to express sympathy with this view: ‘Mr Trump’s demands towards America’s allies to “stop being so dependent on us” is, in a sense, correct.’ Mr Abe saw it as his duty to convince Mr Trump that it was in America’s interest to remain the leader of the free world and that Japan and European nations would step up their cooperation in doing so.
Mr Abe also understood that Mr Trump was more of a transactionalist than a true isolationist and could therefore be engaged through ‘good deals’. He recalls, ‘Mr Trump was an entrepreneur and had no prior involvements with politics… he therefore tried to extrapolate methods which were successful in business into international politics. That is the nature of America First.’
It was in this spirit that in 2018 Prime Minister Abe purchased a hundred and five F-35 fifth-generation fighters in front of a chuffed President Trump. In 2019 he handed him a colourful map of the United States showing job-creating investments by Japanese companies in various states, posted here by Peter Baker, a New York Times reporter. It is attention-grabbing stuff: ‘Japan has FIVE additional investments in JUST ONE MONTH’. Some of the investments are adorned with bright red ‘News!’ stickers. Mr Trump is said to have been delighted.
However, there were also limits to this approach. On his third day in office, Mr Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP, one of Mr Abe’s signature trade policies, undoing years of negotiation. The ties between the two leaders didn’t lead President Trump to exempt Japanese steel and aluminium from a tariff hike. In 2018 while Abe petitioned to mediate between the United States and Iran, a country with surprisingly cordial relations with Japan, after the former withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) nuclear deal, he was promptly ignored and further sanctions followed. Further, Mr Abe’s tricks cannot be replicated by everyone. It helped that the two shared many values; both were nationalists, conservatives, and security hawks. Mr Trump respects strength, and Mr Abe was able to represent Japan with a relatively firm domestic holding, leading the LDP to three lower-house electoral victories. Eventually becoming the longest serving Prime Minister in Japanese history, he had four years of experience under his belt (five years if combined with his first stint at the job from 2006 to 2007) by the time President Trump was inaugurated. Mr Trump’s thumping victory in the 2024 presidential election means a new logic in American foreign policy is in vogue – America First, bro-style friendships and personalities, and business-like deal-making. Only time will tell what a second Trump administration will mean for the world. One thing is clear, however: world leaders will have to adjust their expectations from Mr Abe’s example. What it takes to successfully shield their country from Mr Trump’s worst instincts like he did – as well as ways in which he failed.