Shadow of Xi summit hangs over Trump's high-stakes talks with Japan's Takaichi

When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi meets U.S. President Donald Trump in New York on Tuesday, the leader casting the longest shadow over the meeting will not even be in the building.

Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on Thursday — two days after Takaichi meets the U.S. leader on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. It will be Xi’s first state visit to the U.S. in over 10 years.

Faced with an unpredictable American president eager for tangible results ahead of what could be a tough November midterm election, Japan is working to ensure its vital interests are not traded away at the Xi-Trump summit.

The Takaichi-Trump talks will unfold amid frosty ties between Tokyo and Beijing. Takaichi’s remarks last November that an attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan infuriated Beijing and sparked months of diplomatic freeze.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

Experts said the timing of Takaichi’s meeting revealed Tokyo’s determination to prevent Washington from making concessions at the expense of Japan’s regional security and economic interests.

They added that Beijing’s rare earth export controls and Taiwan would be featured in the Trump-Takaichi talks, with the Japanese prime minister using the opportunity to reiterate Tokyo’s perspective to the U.S. leader.

Beijing confirmed on Monday that Xi would make a three-day state visit to Washington from Wednesday to Friday — his third face-to-face meeting with Trump since the U.S. president returned to office last year.

Ahead of a meeting with Xi in South Korea last October, Trump visited Tokyo for hours of direct discussions with Takaichi. She reciprocated the visit in March for bilateral talks at the White House.

This pattern reflects a deliberate strategy by Tokyo: maintaining personal rapport with Trump and securing assurances before Washington enters critical talks with Beijing, even as unpredictable U.S. rhetoric continues to test allies’ coordination.

“Tokyo’s priority is to prevent a U.S.-China stabilisation deal from coming at the expense of Japan’s economic security or regional deterrence,” said Kenichi Doi, senior research fellow at the Institute of Geoeconomics in Japan.

Japan would welcome more reliable flows of rare earths and other critical inputs, he added.

“Tokyo will also want Washington to treat China’s dual-use restrictions on Japan as an alliance-wide supply-chain issue, given their potential spillovers through Japanese production into U.S. industries,” he said.

Doi said Takaichi was likely to seek confirmation of Washington’s commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, along with closer alignment on critical minerals, export controls and wider economic security.

Following Takaichi’s Taiwan comments, Beijing enforced strict dual-use export controls covering items destined for Japan, including critical minerals, rare earths and advanced tech.

The rare earth restrictions loom large in Tuesday’s discussions. China controls 90 percent of the world’s processed rare earths and at least 60 percent of rare earth extraction, giving it considerable leverage.

Asked on Monday whether rare earth exports to Japan would be addressed at the Xi-Trump summit, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said that restrictions on dual-use items were a necessary step to curb Japan’s remilitarisation and nuclear ambitions.

Beijing has defended its restrictions as a direct countermeasure against Tokyo’s defence build-up.

“In her own words, Takaichi sees Taiwan’s security as inextricably linked to Japan’s own,” said Sean King, senior vice-president at New York-based business advisory firm Park Strategies, adding that the Japanese leader was “unnerved by” Trump’s continued delay of an arms sales package to Taiwan.

“She will surely be keeping a close eye on Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping to see if Trump again appears swayed,” he said, adding that Takaichi might worry the Diaoyu Islands, known in Japan as the Senkakus, could be next on the U.S. president’s “reeducation list” if Trump were to start siding with Beijing on Taiwan. The Diaoyus are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea claimed by Tokyo, Beijing and Taipei.

The South China Morning Post reported earlier that Washington was considering postponing the announcement of arms sales to Taiwan until the end of the year, pointing to a planned bilateral meeting between Trump and Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen in November and Xi’s expected visit to Florida for the Group of 20 summit in December.

According to Doi, Tokyo’s worst-case outcome for the Xi-Trump summit would be if the U.S. leader secures economic concessions from Beijing in exchange for shifting Washington’s position on the Taiwan Strait or technology controls “without sufficient coordination with its allies.”

The timing of the meetings raises the question of whether Trump intends to use the impending Xi summit to squeeze Tokyo for concessions on burden-sharing, base hosting costs or currency valuations.

However, analysts believe obvious discord between the U.S. and its foremost Asian ally would undermine Trump’s own diplomatic leverage.

“Trump is transactional with Japan, but he has little incentive to manufacture a visible dispute with Tokyo two days before negotiating with Xi,” Doi said.

“Extracting marginal concessions now at the cost of displaying alliance friction would weaken, rather than strengthen, Washington’s hand with Beijing.”

Doi said Tuesday’s meeting between Trump and Takaichi would be more about showing policy alignment before Xi’s visit.

King agreed that Washington’s commercial posture towards Tokyo was relatively stable, noting that Japan remained the top foreign direct investor in the United States.

“The purpose of Tuesday’s talk is to remind everyone that Japan is America’s premier Asian ally and that mainland China is a geostrategic rival, and Japan is the U.S.’ anchor in Asia, as it were,” he said.

Read the article at SCMP.