Abe and Trump to agree on technology cooperation in Tokyo meeting

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump will agree on their countries' cooperation 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 Saturday. 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 free trade deals to address trade imbalance. Abe is also expected to make a renewed push for exporting Japan's high-speed rail and other infrastructure technologies as Trump visits during his first official trip to Asia, the source said. Areas of cooperation will include autonomous driving and next-generation computers for developing artificial intelligence, the source said. In the second round of the high-level economic dialogue between the two countries in Washington earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence expressed the Trump administration's interest in commencing talks for a Japan-U.S. free trade agreement and stressed the need to reduce the U.S. trade deficit in goods.