“I Remember Pearl Harbor,” Frustrated Trump Tells Abe: U.S. Paper

August 29, 2018

Washington- U.S. President Donald Trump voiced his strong frustration at his country's trade deficit with Japan at a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in June, The Washington Post reported online Tuesday.

According to the article, Trump said during the "tense" meeting, "I remember Pearl Harbor," referring to Japan's surprise attack that propelled the United States into World War II.

Then the president "launched into a blistering critique of Japan's economic policies," the major daily quoted people familiar with the Abe-Trump conversation as saying.

Trump "railed against the U.S. trade deficit with Japan and urged Abe to negotiate a bilateral trade deal that is more favorable to U.S. exporters of beef and automobiles." But Abe "rebuffed Trump's overture," the paper reported.

This is the first detailed media report on Trump's dissatisfaction at Japan, a close U.S. ally.

The U.S. and Japanese leaders are also said to have locked horns with each other over issues involving North Korea.

Revealing that senior officials from Tokyo and Pyongyang had a secret meeting in July in Vietnam, the paper said, "Senior U.S. officials expressed irritation that Japan wasn't forthright about the meeting, given Washington's near-constant updates to Tokyo on its dealings with North Korea."

The Japanese official was identified as Shigeru Kitamura, director of cabinet intelligence, and the North Korean official as Kim Song Hye, in charge of reunification of North and South Korea, according to the article. They are believed to have discussed the issue of abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korean spies decades ago.

The Abe-Trump meeting was held in Washington on June 7, ahead of the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore on June 12.

In phone talks and meetings before Trump's summit with Kim Jong Un, Abe advised Trump not to halt military exercises with South Korea or entertain an agreement to formally end the Korean War until North Korea takes concrete steps to denuclearize, the paper pointed out.

But "Abe was completely ignored," it quoted a person close to the prime minister as saying. Jiji Press