Japan Prints Out Simple Map for Trump Visualizing Country’s Investment in US - Reports

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly decided to play it safe and used a simple way to show the US president growing Japanese investment in the US, which Trump later praised after the meeting.

The Japanese prime minister on Friday at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan presented Trump with a straightforward, colourful chart to showcase Japanese investment in the US, a White House official told Axios.

The New York Times reporter Peter Baker also tweeted a picture of the chart with the comment, "Like others around the world, the Japanese have figured out how to play to a visiting Trump." The chart's headline, "Japan has five additional investments in just one month," is in big red letters with key words underlined, possibly designed to mirror Trump’s use of capital letters in his tweets.

After his meeting with Shinzo Abe at the G20 summit in Japan, Trump praised the investments the chart depicted, mentioning the “magnificent plants” built by Japanese companies.

“I appreciate the fact that you’re sending many automobile companies into Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and North Carolina – a lot of our states,” he said.

Trump has previously refused to read long briefing documents before meetings, preferring visualization to lengthy factual documents, a senior administration official told Reuters back in 2017.