new leader

TOKYO — President Trump opened his visit to Japan on Monday with greetings from the emperor a day before he meets new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who is banking on building a friendly personal relationship with the U.S. leader to ease trade tensions.

One key to this strategy might lie in an idea floated by Japan’s government to buy a fleet of Ford F-150 trucks, a meaningful gesture that may also be impractical given the narrow streets in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

It’s an early diplomatic test for Takaichi, the first woman to lead Japan. She took office only last week, and has a tenuous coalition backing her.

Trump instantly bought into the idea of Ford trucks as he flew to Asia aboard Air Force One.

“She has good taste,” Trump told reporters. “That’s a hot truck.”

Japanese Emperor Naruhito welcomed Trump at the Imperial Palace after the president’s arrival, and the two spoke for about 30 minutes. Trump straightened his jacket as he stood next to Naruhito for photos before the two sat across a round table, with flowers in the middle, for their talks.

“A great man!” he said twice while pointing to the emperor. Trump last saw the emperor in 2019, soon after Naruhito ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, becoming the first foreign dignitary invited to the palace.

Trump and Takaichi spoke over the phone while the president was mid-flight on Saturday. Takaichi stressed her status as a protege of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a favorite of Trump’s from his first term, and said she praised him for brokering the Gaza ceasefire that led to the return of hostages held by Hamas.

“I thought [Trump] is a very cheerful and fun person,” she said. “He well recognizes me and said he remembers me as a politician whom [former] Prime Minister Abe really cared about,” she said. “And I told the president that I extremely look forward to welcoming him in Tokyo.”

Trump spent Sunday in Malaysia, where he participated in a regional summit, and departed Monday morning for Japan. While on Air Force One on Monday, he said he planned to talk in Tokyo about the “great friendship” between the U.S. and Japan.

Resetting the trade relationship

Beneath the hospitality is the search for a strategy to navigate the increasingly complex trade relationship that Trump shook up earlier this year with tariffs.

Trump wants allies to buy more American goods and also make financial commitments to build factories and energy infrastructure in the U.S.

The meetings in Japan come before Trump’s sit-down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday in South Korea.

Both the U.S. and Japan have sought to limit China’s manufacturing ambitions, as the emergence of Chinese electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and advanced computer chips could undermine the American and Japanese economies.

“In light of the planned meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping shortly afterward, Trump may also be considering how he might strengthen his hand by demonstrating the robustness of the U.S.-Japan relationship,” said Kristi Govella, Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Japan’s previous administration agreed in September to invest $550 billion in the U.S., which led Trump to trim a threatened 25% tariff on Japanese goods to 15%. But Japan wants the investments to favor Japanese vendors and contractors.

Japan’s economy and trade minister, Ryosei Akazawa, has said his ministry is compiling a list of projects in computer chips and energy to try to meet the investment target.

“As far as I know, I’m hearing that there are a number of Japanese companies that are showing interest,” he told reporters Friday, though he did not give further details.

Ford trucks in Tokyo would be a powerful symbol

Japanese officials are looking at the possibility of buying more American soybeans, liquefied natural gas and autos. The U.S.-China trade conflict has shut American soybeans out of the Chinese market, leading China to seek more Brazilian supply. China reported no U.S. soybean imports in September, a first since November 2018.

For Trump, the prospect of Ford trucks in the skyscrapered streets of Tokyo would be a win. The administration has long complained that American vehicles were being shut out of a market that is the home of Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Isuzu, Mitsubishi and Subaru. In a September interview on CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Japan wouldn’t buy U.S.-branded vehicles because “Chevys” were popular with Japanese gangsters.

Takaichi may arrange for Ford F-150 trucks to be showcased in a place Trump gets to see them, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported. The government is considering importing the trucks for its transport ministry to use for inspecting roads and infrastructure, though there are concerns that the F-150 could cause congestion on narrow Japanese streets.

“We appreciate President Trump’s advocating for American made products,” Ford spokesperson Dave Tovar said. “We would be excited to introduce America’s best-selling truck to work and government customers in Japan.”

Japanese media have reported that Toyota Motor Corp. Chairman Akio Toyoda could announce plans to import his company’s American-made cars back to Japan during a dinner with Trump and other business leaders on Wednesday.

The gestures — combined with Takaichi’s connection to Abe — should help her deal with Trump, who seems predisposed to like her.

“I think she’s going to be great,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “She’s a great friend of Mr. Abe, who was a great man.”

In 2016, Abe gave Trump a high-end golf club to celebrate his first election, and the leaders bonded over their love of golf. Trump often expresses sadness about Abe’s 2022 assassination.

But there are risks for Takaichi in emphasizing her ties to Abe, said Rintaro Nishimura, who specializes in Japan at the advisory firm The Asia Group.

“Because it’s Takaichi’s first diplomatic engagement I think she wants to start with sort of a bang,” Nishimura said. “Succeeding the Abe-line rhetoric is definitely going to be part of this engagement, although some also suggest that leaning too heavily on the Abe line might not exactly be good for her for creating her own kind of portfolio, her status as Japan’s leader.”

Following his meeting with Takaichi on Tuesday, Trump will give a speech aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier anchored in Japan, then hold a dinner with business leaders. Trump plans to leave for South Korea on Wednesday.

But aboard Air Force One on Monday, he told reporters that he was also ready to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, should that be an option.

“If he wants to meet, I’ll be in South Korea,” Trump said.

Boak and Yamaguchi write for the Associated Press. AP writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

WASHINGTON — President Trump greeted Lee Jae Myung, the new president of South Korea, by asserting that a “Purge or Revolution” was taking place there and threatening to not do business with Seoul as he prepared to host the new leader at the White House later Monday.

Trump elaborated later Monday that he was referring to raids on churches and on a U.S. military base by the new South Korean government, which they “probably shouldn’t have done,” the president argued.

“I heard bad things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday morning. “I don’t know if it’s true or not. I’ll be finding out.”

The warning shot previewed a potentially hostile confrontation later Monday as Lee, the liberal leader and longtime critic of Seoul’s conservative establishment, sits down with Trump to discuss Seoul and Washington’s recent trade agreement and continued defense cooperation. Lee leads a nation that has been in a state of political turmoil for the last several months after its former leader, the conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, briefly imposed martial law last December which eventually led to his stunning ouster from office.

Trump did not identify specific raids. But earlier this month, South Korean police conducted a raid on a church led by a conservative activist pastor whom authorities allege is connected to a pro-Yoon protest in January that turned violent, according to Yonhap news agency. A special prosecutor’s team that is investigating corruption allegations against Yoon’s wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, also raided the facilities of the Unification Church after allegations that one of its officials gave Kim luxury goods.

Meanwhile, Osan Air Base, which is jointly operated by the United States and South Korea, was also the target of a raid last month by investigators looking into how Yoon’s activation of martial law transpired, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. South Korean officials have insisted the raid was in the areas controlled by Seoul.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there,” Trump posted on social media Monday morning. “I am seeing the new President today at the White House. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

Yoon, who was elected to a five-year term in 2022, was considered more ideologically aligned with Trump and had even taken up golfing again after the U.S. president was reelected last November to try to forge a bond with him.

The liberal Lee, an outspoken critic of Seoul’s conservative establishment who had narrowly lost to Yoon in that 2022 election, led the South Korean parliament’s efforts to overturn Yoon’s martial law decree while impeaching him. The nation’s Constitutional Court formally dismissed Yoon in April.

Before Trump’s Truth Social post Monday morning, the first in-person meeting between Trump and Lee had been expected to help flesh out details of a July trade deal between the two countries that has Seoul investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. The agreement set tariffs on South Korean goods at 15% after Trump threatened rates as high as 25%.

Trump declared at the time that South Korea would be “completely OPEN TO TRADE” with the U.S. and accept goods such as cars and agricultural products. Automobiles are South Korea’s top export to the U.S.

Seoul has one of the largest trade surpluses among Washington’s NATO and Indo-Pacific allies, and countries where the U.S. holds a trade deficit has drawn particular ire from Trump, who wants to eliminate such trade imbalances.

Lee’s office said in announcing the visit that the two leaders plan to discuss cooperating on key manufacturing sectors such as semiconductors, batteries and shipbuilding. The latter has been a particular area of focus for the U.S. president.

On defense, one potential topic is the continued presence of U.S. troops in South Korea and concerns in Seoul that the U.S. will seek higher payments in return.

Ahead of his visit to Washington, Lee traveled to Tokyo for his first bilateral visit as president in a hugely symbolic trip for the two nations that hold longstanding historical wounds. The summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was interpreted by analysts as a way to show unity and potential leverage as Japan and South Korea face new challenges from the Trump administration.

Lee was the first South Korean president to choose Japan for the inaugural bilateral visit since the two nations normalized ties in 1965.

Elected in June, Lee was a former child laborer with an arm deformity who rose his way through South Korea’s political ranks to lead the liberal Democratic Party and win the presidency after multiple attempts.

Lee faced an assassination attempt in January 2024, when he was stabbed in the neck by a man saying he wanted Lee’s autograph and later told investigators that he intended to kill the politician.

Lee arrived in the U.S. on Sunday and will leave Tuesday. He headlined a dinner Sunday evening with roughly 200 local Korean-Americans in downtown Washington on Sunday night.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Trump met Wednesday with Syria’s new leader, praising him as a “young, attractive guy” and urging him to rid his country of “Palestinian terrorists.”

Trump also urged Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to sign onto the historic Abraham Accords brokered during Trump’s first term.

The meeting in Riyadh came as Trump concluded the Saudi Arabian leg of his Middle Eastern trip and headed to Qatar, the second destination of what has so far been an opulence-heavy tour of the region.

The meeting with Al-Sharaa, which lasted roughly half an hour and was the first time in a quarter of a century that the leaders of the two nations have met, marks a significant victory for Al-Sharaa’s fledgling government, coming one day after Trump’s decision to lift long-standing sanctions from the war-ravaged country.

It also lends legitimacy to a leader whose past as an Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi leader — Al-Sharaa severed ties with the group in 2016 — had made Western nations keep him at arm’s length.

The sanctions were imposed on Syria in 2011, when the now-deposed President Bashar Assad began a brutal crackdown to quell anti-government uprisings.

Al-Sharaa headed an Islamist rebel coalition that toppled Assad in December, but the Trump administration and other Western governments conditioned the lifting of sanctions on his government fulfilling certain conditions.

Yet as is his custom, Trump cut through protocol and relied on personal relations, lifting the sanctions at the urging of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a long-time supporter of Syria’s rebellion, who joined the meeting via phone.

Speaking on Air Force One en route to Qatar, Trump described Al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”

“He’s got a real shot at holding it together,” Trump added. “I spoke with President Erdogan, who is very friendly with him. He feels he’s got a shot of doing a good job. It’s a torn-up country.”

According to a readout shared by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X, Trump urged Al-Sharaa to sign onto the Abraham Accords, tell “foreign terrorists” to leave Syria and deport “Palestinian terrorists,” help the U.S. in preventing Islamic State’s resurgence and assume responsibility for detention centers in northeast Syria housing thousands of people affiliated with Islamic State.

The Abraham Accords were the centerpiece of Trump’s foreign policy achievements in his first term. Brokered in 2020, they established diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — without conditioning them on Palestinian statehood or Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

Under Assad, Syria maintained a decades-old truce with Israel, despite hosting several Palestinian factions and allowing Iran and affiliated groups to operate in the country.