Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Japanese Overseas Minister Motegi Toshimitsu Earlier than Their Assembly

FOREIGN MINISTER MOTEGI: (Via interpreter) It is a superb pleasure to see you, Mr. Secretary, my present counterpart to Japan’s most necessary dialogue.  And additionally we really feel very grateful to your assembly the households of abductees a second in the past, and that you just prolonged very heat phrases for them.  Thank you a lot. 

During President Trump’s first time period I served as Japan’s chief negotiator within the Japan-U.S. commerce talks and subsequently as international minister supporting the Japan-U.S. relations underneath Prime Minister Abe and President Trump.  While there have been instances of robust negotiations, we labored by all these challenges, and the Japan-U.S. relations made vital progress. 

Prime Minister Takaichi and President Trump held a considerable alternate of views in a cordial and heat environment this morning.  I sit up for working intently with you, Mr. Secretary, to exhibit the world’s biggest alliance, Japan-U.S. alliance, to the world. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, thanks for welcoming us.  It’s been an outstanding go to already with the President and the prime minister.  We’re very completely happy that this got here collectively and for this chance to see each other, and I consider we’ll see one another once more in simply 24 hours in a foreign country, in South Korea.

PARTICIPANT:  (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Oh, you understood – oh, yeah.  That’s not honest.  (Laughter.)  

I – as you’ve talked about it, we – at the moment we signed quite a lot of agreements, the President signed with the prime minister.  But all of those negotiations and talks and commerce offers and partnerships on crucial minerals are all constructed on a really highly effective basis which has been laid over the many years between our two international locations.  The basis – financial basis could be very sturdy.  Japan has lengthy been one of many largest if not the most important in lots of circumstances traders within the U.S. financial system.  The partnerships that we’ve had on quite a lot of enterprise fronts has been extraordinary. 

And then our nationwide safety pursuits align very often – the truth is, more often than not, few situations that I can recall the place the United States’ and Japan’s nationwide safety pursuits usually are not aligned.  Now now we have to construct on that by modernizing our relationship for the challenges of the twenty first century within the subject of expertise, the place we as superior economies face threats in cyber safety, in private knowledge, in cyber theft, and the entire challenges; as superior manufacturing economies, threats to our provide chains.  We can by no means reside in a world the place others obtain dominance by dependency – our dependency permits others to determine dominance over us.  We have a lot to work on collectively.

So it’s an thrilling new period within the U.S.-Japan relationship, but it surely’s constructed on the muse of many years of working collectively, and now it’s being modernized to mirror the challenges of the brand new period that we’re going to confront collectively like we confronted the challenges for the final 80 years.