Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga attends a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker event in Tokyo, Japan August 30, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s top government spokesman said on Thursday that its active trade investment in the United States was a source of “vitality” in the economic relationship between the two nations.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga also told reporters Americans recognized that Japanese firms were good corporate citizens in the United States.

In a news conference, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump mentioned Japan and other countries as having large trade imbalances with the United States.

Suga said that the government was analyzing Trump’s comments and that it wanted to develop Japan’s economic relationship with the United States further.