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Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has become the first foreign leader to meet Japan’s newly enthroned Emperor Naruhito, in a state visit overshadowed by tensions over trade and policy on North Korea.

Naruhito and Empress Masako on Monday greeted Trump at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo as part of a formal welcoming ceremony that was broadcast live on national television.

Later on Monday, the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, will sit down to a lavish state dinner with the emperor and empress.

Emperor Naruhito ascended to the throne on May 1, opening what is called the era of “Reiwa,” or “beautiful harmony.”

Trump is also slated to hold formal talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after the two men spent the weekend playing golf, eating out and watching sumo. They will speak to the press later on Monday.

“There’s a sense that this is another sign of the good relations between these two countries, but in particular a sign of the relationship between Trump and Abe,” Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from Tokyo, said.

“There’s a sense that they could have given this meeting to anyone, but they didn’t. They gave it to the US, they gave it to Trump.” 

Differences

The show of friendship is meant to demonstrate the strength of the alliance between the US and Japan despite policy disagreements over trade and North Korea.

Trump has threatened to target Japanese carmakers with high tariffs as part of an effort to reduce trade surpluses with other countries.

Washington believes surpluses are a sign that the US has been mistreated on trade – a theme Trump picked up on after landing in Tokyo on Saturday vowing to make the relationship between the world’s largest and third-largest economies what he described as “a little bit more fair”.

Negotiations are taking place on a bilateral trade agreement but Trump has said he does not expect major progress on it until July, when Abe faces an election for parliament’s upper house.

Trump has spearheaded an expensive trade war with China, a major dispute that has hurt markets worldwide and confounded US allies, including Japan and the European Union.

Washington’s allies, although they share US concerns about Chinese practices, disagree with Trump’s tactics of threatening tariffs on their products rather than seeking cooperation in standing up to Beijing.

In addition to trade, Abe and Trump are expected to discuss North Korea and Iran.

Trump said on Sunday he was not worried about a recent missile launch by North Korea. That put him at odds with his own national security adviser, John Bolton, who said on Saturday that Pyongyang’s recent short-range missile tests violated United Nations Security Council resolutions. Japan shares Bolton’s view.

Also on Monday, Trump will meet the families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean decades ago. Abe has urged the US president to raise the issue in talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump is in Japan for a four-day state visit and is expected to address troops at a US base in the country on Tuesday.

BERLIN — Phew. Turns out the bark of Europe’s far right is worse than its bite.

Yes, illiberal parties did well in France and Italy, Poland, Hungary and beyond. But overall no better than expected, and in some cases worse so.

Bottom line: The populists’ finish wasn’t that much stronger than in 2014.

That’s good news for Europe’s democratic parties and even better news for the European Union. The strategy of Europe’s centrists, from Merkel to Macron, to cast the election as a question of “Europe’s destiny” helped drive voters to polling stations.

Throughout the campaign, pro-EU parties warned that the scourge of Euroskeptic populism, in the guise of France’s National Rally, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Italy’s League and many others, threatened to undo decades of European integration.

Even in France and Italy, where the populists did best on the Continent, the results were below some expectations.

Europeans heeded those calls and turned out to vote in large numbers, with voter participation across Europe at about 51 percent, compared to 43 percent in 2014.

The strong participation helped temper the results for the Euroskeptics, who tend to benefit from low turnout because they’re good at getting their own voters to cast a ballot.

In Germany and Austria, the far-right populists finished below their results in national elections in 2017, down by 1.8 and 3.3 percentage points respectively.

Though the AfD was quick to note its result was up by more than 50 percent compared to the last European election in 2014 — from 7.1 to 10.8 percent — the comparison is problematic because the party has undergone a dramatic metamorphosis since then. Five years ago, the AfD was still focused on its opposition to eurozone bailouts; its hard-right lurch and focus on migration came only later.

The German-speaking far right’s reversal of fortune might have been influenced by the recent “Ibiza affair” in Austria, but there were signs of weakness elsewhere too.

The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party won only one seat in the European Parliament, compared to four last time out. In the Netherlands, far-right parties performed worse than many of their opponents feared. In Spain, the populist Vox party managed to win only about 6 percent of the vote. Estonia’s far-right EKRE party, which recently joined the country’s governing coalition, finished only third in Sunday’s European election.

Though Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party did well in the U.K., capturing first place, it’s unlikely to play much of a role in next Parliament without membership in one of the main alliances, which seems unlikely.

Even in France and Italy, where the populists did best on the Continent, the results were below some expectations. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally recorded a strong 23.5 percent of the French vote, finishing first — but that was still slightly below the party’s 2014 result. Her rebranded party is on course to have two seats fewer in the European Parliament this time around.

Salvini’s League party appears to have performed strongly in Italy, winning more than 33 percent of the vote. But his dreams of forming the biggest group in the European Parliament will remain just that. POLITICO’s projections suggest his group will have around 70 seats in the 751-member chamber.

Salvini has been laying the groundwork for a new populist alliance that is expected to include the AfD, the National Rally, Austria’s Freedom Party and possibly Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, which may leave the center-right European People’s Party soon.

With or without Orbán, there are big questions over just how cohesive the planned populist grouping will be. While the parties share a basic aversion to migration and an illiberal, anti-democratic ethos, they don’t have much else in common.

Salvini, for example, thumbs his nose at European rules regarding budgetary discipline, a position that’s anathema to the AfD and Austria’s Freedom Party. The Italian leader also wants other European countries to take in many of the refugees now stranded in Italy, something Orbán rejects outright.

While such divisions aren’t new, they illustrate the advantage the centrist parties — a group expected to control a majority of the new parliament’s seats — will have vis-à-vis the populists.

By definition, the populists pursue a nationalist agenda at odds with coalition-building at the European level. That means the mainstream parties don’t have to try to divide and conquer them. The populists will do it themselves.

The center-right European People’s Party clung to first position in Sunday’s European election but will have a slimmer plurality in the European Parliament after voters delivered big gains to liberals, Greens and far-right populists.

Voter turnout surged across the Continent to reach 50 percent or more for the first time in at least two decades — suggesting renewed relevance for the EU amid Britain’s so-far failed effort to quit the bloc, and mounting external challenges from Russia, China and the United States.

Initial projections showed the EPP is likely to hold 178 seats — a sharp decline from the 216 it currently holds. The center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is expected to come second with 138 seats, down from 187.

A new centrist-liberal coalition led by French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is predicted to come third, with 104 seats, followed by the Greens with 66 seats. A disparate array of far-right and anti-EU forces, including the U.K. Brexit Party, is set to win at least 116 seats — but it is unclear how coordinated they will be, and they are likely to fall into at least two separate groups.

Overall, it is a highly muddled result that is unlikely to lend clarity to the upcoming negotiations to fill the EU’s top jobs, including the presidencies of the European Commission, the Council and Parliament as well as the post of high representative of foreign affairs.

“The EPP does not have the results, nor the political strength anymore to lead the EU and the European Commission” — Udo Bullmann, German MEP

Altogether, pro-EU parties will still control a substantial majority, but the balance of power among them will be difficult to ascertain. Even as the EPP holds on to the top spot, it will be far outnumbered by the other main pro-EU groups — the Socialists, Liberals and Greens — which together are expected to control 317 seats, and which have vowed to break the conservatives’ monopoly on the leadership of the EU institutions.

Udo Bullmann, the German MEP who leads the Socialists’ group in Parliament, said the EPP’s days in power are over.

“The EPP does not have the results, nor the political strength anymore to lead the EU and the European Commission,” Bullmann said. “We need a new a coalition for reform.”

However, Joseph Daul, the president of the EPP, declared victory for his party and laid claim to the Commission presidency for its nominee, the German MEP Manfred Weber.

“We have won the election,” Daul said at a rally with Weber at the Renaissance Hotel in Brussels. “There is only one job for us — it’s president of the Commission. It’s Manfred Weber.”

Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition and a prominent liberal, called the election a “landmark” and “a signal for change.”

“This is not anymore just a two-party majority,” she told reporters, referring to liberal gains. “I have been working with breaking monopolies, that is what I have been doing for five years now — this is also what voters have been doing today.”

Le Pen’s symbolic win

While voter turnout was a bright spot for the Brussels establishment, any celebration was tempered by the steep losses for the mainstream center-right and center-left parties that have led the EU since its founding. Gains by the far right suggest the bloc will continue to struggle with a populist insurgency for years to come.

The unsettled landscape is most clearly illustrated in France, where Macron’s La République En Marche party has devastated the traditional big two parties — the conservative Les Républicains and the Socialists. According to projections, Les Républicains lost 13 of their 20 seats, while the Socialists fell from 13 seats to just five. But Macron’s party, which was predicted to win 21 seats, was bested by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which won 22 seats in a highly symbolic victory for the nationalists.

In Germany, the collapse of the Social Democrats was even more dramatic, with a projected loss of 11 seats — to 16 from 27 in the current Parliament. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, finished first but were still projected to suffer an overall loss of five seats, to 29 from 34 in 2014.

As the two mainstream parties fell, the Greens soared in Germany, winning a projected 22 seats, up from 13. The far-right Alternative for Germany party also jumped in support, and is projected to win 11 seats.

In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez led his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) to a strong victory.

With 95 percent of ballots counted, PSOE won 33 percent of the vote, and captured 20 seats in Parliament, a pickup of six seats. The conservative People’s Party finished second with 20 percent and 12 seats in Parliament, a loss of four seats.

The liberal Ciudadanos and the far-right Vox both had disappointing results, returning seven and three MEPs respectively.


The far-left Podemos will have six MEPs, while former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, now living in Belgium, and his former deputy Oriol Junqueras (jailed on remand in Spain) will both enter the European Parliament.

‘People’s victory’

But the victory by the Socialists in Spain, as well as a surprise first-place finish in the Netherlands, and a gain of seats in Malta and Denmark, are not enough to offset the left’s losses in France and Germany, the EU’s biggest countries.

While the French nationalist Le Pen scored a victory over Macron, her party — which she rebranded National Rally from National Front after losing the presidential election in 2017 — is projected to win one fewer seat than in 2014.

Still, that did not stop Le Pen from claiming victory and insisting, without basis, that Macron would have no choice but to dissolve the French National Assembly. “I see this as the people’s victory, which has taken power back tonight with pride and dignity,” Le Pen declared in a speech to supporters. “We welcome this result with joy.”

She added, “A great movement for change is born tonight. I invite all patriots, regardless of where they come from, to come and join the National Rally.”

Among far-right forces, the biggest winner of the night is expected to be Italy’s League, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who made hard-line immigration policies the cornerstone of his campaign. Italian media predicted the League has won up to 32 percent of the vote.

This article has been updated.

Maïa de la Baume, Lili Bayer, Laura Kayali, Rym Momtaz, Eline Schaart, Diego Torres and Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting. 

Image: Aytac Unal / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images