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Asia Minute: Trump’s Asia Pacific Phone Calls

Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Japan’s Prime Minister will likely be the first Asian leader to meet face to face with Donald Trump since the presidential election. Shinzo Abe will see Trump next week. Other leaders in Asia are either reaching out to Trump or making plans for further communication. HPR’s Bill Dorman has more in today’s Asia Minute.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was already heading to Peru for a summit meeting of leaders of APEC--the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.  Now Abe will leave Tokyo a little early and stop by New York next week to meet Donald Trump.

South Korea’s leader is not going to APEC this year—she’s in the midst of a political scandal at home.  But President Park Geun-hye has already checked in with Trump by way of a telephone call this week.

Trump has also spoken by phone with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The list of Asia Pacific phone calls may well grow in coming days.

That APEC leaders meeting in Peru gets underway in a little more than a week…and will be the first international gathering of regional leaders since the U.S. presidential election.  All of these initial calls with the president-elect have been pretty standard fare—congratulations on the election and reinforcement of each country’s bi-lateral relationship with the United States.

The early in-person meetings may not be much different.  Trump and Abe are likely to talk about the overall alliance—expectations would be for soothing language on both sides….and perhaps some preliminary and at this point still polite discussion about trade.

Bill Dorman has been the news director at Hawaiʻi Public Radio since 2011.
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