U.S. President Donald Trump has railed against his country’s alliance with Japan, calling the partnership — which turns 65 this year — unfair and “one-sided.”
“We defend them, but they don’t have to defend us,” Trump said suddenly during a Cabinet meeting last Friday as he was riffing on his global tariff push and of the inequity of the global trading system. “We pay hundreds of billions of dollars to defend them ... they don’t pay anything.”
But Trump’s views don’t always jibe with reality — and Tokyo has been quick to set the record straight.
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