Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump will agree on cooperating toward the development of next-generation mobile communication and other new technologies when they meet in Tokyo next month, a source close to Japan-U.S. relations said.
Such an accord will be in line with Tokyo's pursuit of mutually agreeable economic cooperation with Washington when the world's biggest and third-largest economies are at odds over the U.S. drive to promote bilateral trade deals to address trade imbalances.
Abe is also expected to make a renewed push for exporting Japan's high-speed rail and other infrastructure technologies as Trump makes his first official trip to Asia, the source said Saturday.
Areas of cooperation will include autonomous driving and next-generation computers for developing artificial intelligence, the source said.
In the second round of the allies' high-level economic dialogue in Washington earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence expressed the Trump administration's interest in commencing talks on a Japan-U.S. free trade agreement and stressed that the U.S. trade deficit in goods had to be reduced.
Pence and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is also finance minister, agreed then to simplify procedures for exporting U.S. automobiles to Japan and to lift restrictions on some farm trade.