TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese and U.S. governments are arranging a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Donald Trump in Washington around Feb. 10, a diplomatic source said Thursday.
The two leaders are expected to discuss trade issues following Trump's issuing of an executive order Monday to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-party free trade pact Abe has hailed as having both economic benefits and strategic importance.
The meeting would be their first since Trump's inauguration last week. Abe and Trump held an unofficial meeting in New York in November last year shortly after Trump's election victory.
In dumping the TPP, Trump has said he wants to focus on negotiating bilateral trade deals instead. Speaking in the Diet Thursday, Abe appeared to signal openness to working out a Japan-U.S. free trade agreement or economic partnership agreement.
"We will appeal (to the U.S. administration) on the TPP, but that doesn't mean we absolutely can't also (sign) an EPA or FTA, as we did with (fellow TPP signatory) Australia," Abe said.
Abe also suggested Japan would advocate retaining some form of tariffs on rice and four other key agricultural products in any trade negotiations with the United States.
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