WEST MIFFLIN — Five months ago, just after President Donald Trump gave a speech in the Mon Valley announcing the finalization of the deal between US Steel and Nippon Steel, I had the opportunity to interview him on Air Force One. As we left the facility, I sat and talked with Trump in “The Beast” as his motorcade circled the nearly mile-long hot strip mill.
Despite the punishing rain as we traveled along the expanse of the series of buildings that make up the hot strip mill, he noted the rail yard and the view of the river 300 feet below when he pointed to the Irvin Works building, whose silver paint had begun to fade to rust.
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“We can fix that. There is this great silver paint that can make this building shine again. It will be a good reminder for the men and women who work here every day that American steel is back, that we’ve not left them behind, and we did it in this deal with a good Japanese partner,” he said.
Trump’s visit in late May solidified the deal between the iconic but struggling American steelmaker and Nippon Steel. The imagery was striking — as was the content — and showed that a U.S. president and a Japanese company could work together even during the toughest negotiations. It set the stage for his visit to Japan on Tuesday.
The visit here was far less glamorous than the one set in an opulent palace in Tokyo on Tuesday morning, where the president bonded with Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s new prime minister, noting that our two countries were allies at the strongest level.
Trump then spent hours holding a series of meetings with Takaichi, who just last week became the first woman to serve as Japan’s prime minister. As Trump noted in an interview with me in February after meeting with her predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese were tough trade negotiators.
Paul Sracic, an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute whose work focuses on trade policy and U.S.-Japan relations, was in Japan during the 47th president’s visit. He said Trump’s trip has been an overwhelming success.
“The clear affection he had for the late [Prime Minister] Shinzo Abe has transferred over to Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. The new prime minister, unlike the former prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, was very close to Abe both politically and personally,” he said
Sracic noted that while legacy media in both the United States and Japan focused on the small diplomatic faux pas of Trump failing to stop and acknowledge the Japanese flag, “The photos of the two leaders, and the multiple agreements signed, demonstrated over and over again that the two countries were as close as two allies could be,” he said.
“There is an irony here. When [former President] Joe Biden came into office in 2021, he emphasized that ‘America was back,’ implying that we had failed to engage with the world under the first Trump administration. With regard to Japan at least, this was never true,” said Sracic.
The fact is that bilateral alliances are at their peak when the leaders of both countries are seen as strong. Think U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.
Sracic argues that the Thatcher-Reagan alliance is similar to what we now have with Trump and Takaichi.
“Although domestic policy-wise it is not accurate to say Takaichi is the same as Thatcher, in terms of foreign policy, there are clear similarities. Thatcher had no illusions about the Soviet Union, and Takaichi has no illusions about China,” he said.
Trump, although he is inaccurately portrayed as an isolationist, has, since his first administration, clearly understood that a strong alliance with Japan is a kind of “force multiplier” in Asia.
Meanwhile, Biden, the alleged multilateralist who claimed he would repair our alliances, didn’t hesitate to damage our alliance with Japan, and likely imperil the jobs of thousands of U.S. steelworkers by blocking Nippon Steel’s purchase of US Steel.
Trump, however, reconsidered his original opposition and found a way to “get to yes.”
Sracic said that the optics in Japan will surely affect Trump’s first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping since he returned to office: “More than anything else, China, which sees itself as the ‘middle kingdom’ in Asia, wants to damage our ties to both Japan and South Korea. Trump clearly demonstrated over the past few days that under his administration, that is not going to happen.”
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The President also visited the troops at the Yokosuka Naval Base, where not only did he do a little “YMCA” shuffle with the troops, along with several selfies, but he also announced that Toyota would be investing over $10 billion in American plants. He also noted he had approved an order of missiles to supply Japanese F-35 jets.
“I’ve just approved the first batch of missiles,” Trump said to the crowd of service members on Tuesday afternoon. “I just want to tell Madam Prime Minister, they’ve been waiting for those missiles, and we got them here right away.”
