After two days of discussions — and a round of golf — at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the US president and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe presented a united front on how to deal with Pyongyang, even as they failed to come to a formal agreement on trade — an issue that has dogged the two nations in recent weeks
Mr Trump on Wednesday accused the media of misreporting his position on TPP, saying he remained opposed to the US rejoining the Pacific Rim pact unless Japan and the other existing members offered the US “a deal we could not refuse”.
He said the US would leave in place tariffs on imports of Japanese steel, which he has sought to use as leverage to pull Tokyo into a bilateral trade negotiation. Japan accounted for less than 5 per cent of US imports of steel in 2017, which represented only about 1 per cent of the value of Japanese exports to the US.