US President Trump has begun his maiden tour of Asia, a region beset with tensions over a nuclear-armed North Korea. SBS Asia Correspondent Katrina Yu explains what's on his agenda, and why the stakes are so high.
President Donald Trump is in Tokyo for his first leg of an ambitious five-nation tour of Asia. Trump hopes to reassert America’s power in a region plagued by tensions over North Korea, and lead by increasingly powerful leaders in China and Japan.
In a series of high-stakes bilateral meetings he hopes to convince Asian leaders that the world is “running out of time” on acting on Pyongyang’s nuclear testing, as well as negotiate billion-dollar trade deals.
But the 71-year-old’s inward-looking “America first” policy has many worried that the US will cede regional power to an increasingly dominant China.
Since withdrawing from the US Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) last January - a key regional economic agreement spear-headed by the Obama administration - America’s commitment to the region, as well as its dependability, has come under scrutiny.
