OSAKA, Japan • President Donald Trump opened his most consequential trip of the year by plunging into a series of high-stakes meetings at an international summit in Japan on Friday by pushing allies on both trade and defense spending.

Trump sat first with the G20 summit’s host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe followed by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel will follow before Trump holds his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the special counsel found extensive evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

“We’ll be discussing trade, we’ll be discussing military,” among other items, Trump said as he sat across from Abe for their discussions. He joked about his previous trip to Japan, in May, when he presented an award to a sumo wrestling champion in Tokyo.

“Everybody’s talking about it all over the world,” Trump claimed.

Moments earlier, as Abe officially received Trump, the president waved over his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both senior White House aides, to pose with him for the official welcome photo. Trump and Abe were later joined by Modi, who a day earlier was the target of a Trump tweet complaining about tariffs. The portion of the meeting open to reporters was convivial: at Trump’s urging, the three leaders engaged in a group fist bump.

Abe and Trump discussed trade and North Korea, while the three leaders spoke about enhanced security cooperation in the South China Sea and Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that Trump has put on a blacklist and is viewed as a national security threat because of the possibility that its equipment could be used for cyberespionage.

But the day’s main event will be Trump’s first public meeting with Putin since the Helsinki summit last July in which Trump refused to side with U.S. intelligence agencies over his Russian counterpart.

Trump said in advance that he expected a “very good conversation” with Putin but said that “what I say to him is none of your business.”

His aides have grown worried that Trump could use the meeting to once again attack special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on the world stage, particularly since Mueller recently agreed to testify before Congress next month.

The United States and Russia are also on opposing sides of the escalating crisis with Iran, which shot down an American drone last week.

President Donald Trump meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a Friday meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

the associated press