World Bulletin / News Desk

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Donald Trump's White House for the first time Friday, hoping to build a personal rapport with the mercurial new US president.

The pair are set to hold talks at the White House before jetting down to Trump's Florida home for a day of golf.

Abe's sporting gambit has historical echoes. His grandfather, prime minister Nobusuke Kishi once golfed with president Dwight Eisenhower.

"That's the one thing about golf, you get to know somebody better on a golf course than you will over lunch," Trump recently told a radio interviewer.

Substantively, the meetings will be a test of whether Trump's transactional approach to diplomacy can take place within the rules-based order.

Abe is expected to dangle proposals to create hundreds of thousands of US jobs through high-speed rail projects and with private cash from Japanese companies.

The quid pro quo would be a commitment to shared defense and avoiding a race-to-the-bottom trade war.

Plans under consideration in the White House propose a substantial hike of import tariffs that could have a serious impact on Japanese manufacturers.

And although Abe has pushed ahead with efforts to boost Japan's military capabilities, Tokyo still relies on US security guarantees.