President Trump appears to me to be playing a masterful game of 3- or even 4-dimensional chess in Japan.  His agenda includes not just trade, which is what most of his public statements mention, but also the complicated issues surrounding North Korean denuclearization and, inherently connected to that, China.  The biggest and most difficult goal of all is to force China to drop its economic development strategy of stealing intellectual property and exporting manufactured goods at low prices, facilitated by managing the value of the renminbi to keep it low. Japan, which has a lot to fear from a nuclear-armed North Korea (because of historic deep hatred of all Koreans toward Japan), is committed to buying the largest fleet of F-35 stealth fighters outside the United States, something that worries both North Korea and China. Both countries deeply fear Japan going nuclear, because both have suffered unbelievably at the hands of Japanese...(Read Full Post)