Trump to meet Japan's PM Takaichi

Donald Trump will meet the emperor, hold talks with new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and make a speech on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier.

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US president Donald Trump.

(AFP)

In his stay from yesterday to tomorrow, the US president will also sign deals on critical minerals and shipbuilding, and may even be gifted some gold-plated golf balls, media reports said.

Tokyo is Washington's closest regional ally. A security treaty obliges the US to defend Japan if attacked and allows US troops to be stationed there.

But Trump has said he wants Tokyo to pay more to host the around 60 000 US military personnel currently in Japan, deriding the decades-old pact as a free ride.

If the US were attacked, Japan “doesn’t have to help us at all” and is free to “watch it on a Sony television”, Trump said in his first term.

Multiple sexual assaults by American troops in Japan, most infamously the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US Marines, have angered many Japanese over the years.