Background Briefing: October 28, 2025
Reality Versus Fiction in Trump’s Asia Tour of Japan then on to South Korea To Meet Xi
We begin with Trump’s Asian summit tour which has him now in Japan and heading to South Korea tomorrow where he will meet with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday. We will discuss the reality versus the fiction our Reality TV star president is spinning in Japan claiming $550 billion in Japanese investment is heading for America, which is a 10th of Japan’s GDP, that will be overseen by a fund Trump will control. We will discuss what Trump calls a “new golden age of the US-Japan alliance” and the likelihood Trump will come away empty from his meeting with Xi to restore exports to China of soybeans from American farmers hurt by Trump’s tariff chaos. Joining us is Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Wall Street Financial Analyst, and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and a number of universities in China. He is the author of many books including America’s Protectionist Takeoff and J is for Junk Economics: An A to Z Guide to the Economics of Reality and Fiction and his latest book is The Destiny of Civilization and we will discuss his article at Counterpunch, “Trump’s Destruction of the US Economy.”
An assessment of Trump’s Claim of a “New Golden Age of the U.S. Japan Alliance”
Then we examine further Trump’s meeting with Japan’s new hard-right Prime Minister and prospects for a deal with China and speak with Kent M. Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and Chief of Station in Asia. He is the author of several novels and his commentary and analysis on global events has appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Asian Wall Street Journal and leading Asian newspapers and he has a Substack column, First and Second Thoughts.