(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump announced George Glass as ambassador to Japan, a key post with an ally as the administration looks to toughen its stance against China.
“I am pleased to announce George Edward Glass as our next United States Ambassador to Japan,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network. “As a former President of an Investment Bank, George will bring his business acumen to the Ambassador’s position,” he added.
Glass, who has also worked in real estate, was US ambassador to Portugal during Trump’s first term as president.
At a press conference earlier Monday, Trump praised Glass as a “highly respected man.”
“He’s been an ambassador before, did a fantastic job. We consider Japan very important,” Trump said during a press conference to announce a $100 billion investment in the US by Japan’s Softbank Group Corp.
In addition to Glass, Trump announced that he would appoint longtime CIA officer and House Committee on Foreign Affairs staffer Leah Francis Campos as his ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Campos is the sister of Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is married to fellow Real World alum Sean Duffy, who is Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Transportation.
Trump also nominated Stacey Feinberg - daughter of sports super-agent Bob Woolf, who represented stars including Larry Bird and Julius Erving - as his ambassador to Luxembourg. Arthur Graham Fisher, the president of a North Carolina real estate firm, was named Trump’s pick for ambassador to Austria.
Trump continues to round out his picks for envoys in key countries, and announced earlier this month that he’d nominate former Georgia Senator David Perdue as ambassador to China. Trump has picked China hawks for some of his key posts while promising to reset American ties with a wave of fresh tariffs that could also hit friendly nations such as Japan.
While ambassador to Portugal, Glass was critical of Chinese investments in the country.
The pick for Japan was announced as the fate of the sale of United States Steel Corp. to Japan-based Nippon Steel Corp. hangs in the balance — a politically fraught transaction that has weighed on ties between the nations.
Biden, who hosted a state dinner for then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April, has signaled opposition to the sale and is said to be planning to block it. Trump has pledged to kill it outright.
The role of the US ambassador to Japan is in large part to support the security alliance between the two countries, providing Tokyo with reassurance as China and North Korea build up their own militaries. The US military has its largest permanent foreign military presence in Japan, with around 55,000 service members at bases around the country.
The allies are set for talks over how much Tokyo pays for the presence of US military bases in the country, an issue that prompted Trump to demand more during his first term as president.
A new five-year deal between the US and Japan for so-called host nation support is scheduled to be agreed by 2026.
Japan, which is one of the largest foreign direct investors into the US, is also bracing for potential trade tariffs from the Trump administration. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who took over as national leader in October, has said Tokyo and Washington should seek mutually beneficial outcomes and not clash in public.
Ishiba has yet to meet Trump, and much of the media focus in Japan has been over whether he will be able to replicate the close relationship former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe struck up with Trump during the president-elect’s last term as leader.
Trump’s former ambassador to Japan, Bill Hagerty, now serves in the Senate.
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