Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe will be in Dubai on Sunday, less than 48 hours after what is expected to be a testing meeting with the US president Donald Trump in Washington, where he is set to defend Tokyo’s monetary policy amid an increasingly tense period for global trade.
Mr Trump last week accused Japan and China of devaluing their currencies while the US looks “like a bunch of dummies”.
Mr Abe, who is set to meet Mr Trump in Washington today, plans to tell him that Japan’s monetary policy is aimed at battling deflation and not at weakening the yen, a Japanese government official told Bloomberg.
Commerce department data last month showed that Japan had overtaken Germany to have the second-largest trade deficit with the US of any individual country besides China. Automobile imports amount to about 80 per cent of the US$69 billion deficit, according to the data.
Mr Abe told parliament last week that he plans to discuss creating jobs and building infrastructure in the US to help assuage Mr Trump’s concerns over trade and stress that Japanese automotive companies have directly or indirectly created 1.5 million jobs.
On Sunday afternoon, Mr Abe will address the World Government Summit in Dubai. Other high-profile attendees include the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde and the Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.
There will be a strong Japanese presence at the summit, which is focused on identifying future trends for government. The futurist and innovation expert Morinosuke Kawaguchi will also speak.
* With Bloomberg
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