Donald Trump’s comeback is now certain, after he decisively won re-election to the White House, but there is growing uncertainty over how his second-term administration will deal with the Asia-Pacific—a region of increasing strategic relevance and home to a number of international economic and security concerns for the U.S.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Experts tell TIME that Trump’s first term, as well as his promises on the campaign trail, can offer clues about his potential approach to Asia. Shortly after his inauguration in 2017, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal involving many Asian states, signaling his dislike of multilateralism. As President, Trump did not regularly show up at regional summits. If he did, he attacked member-states of international groups, accusing them of abusing trade relations with Washington.Trump also questioned the fairness of mutual defense treaties that rely on American military power.
In 2018, Trump launched a trade war against China—placing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. And he’s vowed to double down on tariffs in his next term. Yet he’s also said that he “had a very strong relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and aims to “have a good relationship with China.”
Joseph Liow, dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, tells TIME that unlike in 2017, the fact that Trump already had a first shot at dealing with Asia means that come 2025 he’ll be “more prepared.” The people that make up his new Cabinet will also be insightful. The names of China hawks like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), former trade representative Robert Lighthizer, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been floated. Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst at California-based think tank RAND, says that more “isolationist” personnel may also hold senior posts, reflecting Trump’s broader, transactional outlook on foreign policy.
But there’s a limit to how much can be anticipated. Ben Bland, Asia-Pacific Programme director at London-based think-tank Chatham House, tells TIME that “in Asia, as elsewhere, Trump will be unpredictable because that is both his nature and his modus operandi.” Kevin Chen, associate research fellow at NTU’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), adds: “He might say one day that we would like to support our allies in the region … but the next day he might decide, ‘I think we’ve paid too much.’”
Here are some of the ways in which Trump’s second administration can be expected to engage with the region.
Economy
Trump has called himself “a Tariff Man,” as trade levies are at the centerpiece of his economic platform, despite critics warning of the risk of an immense cost burden that would be placed on Americans. Trump has said he plans to impose a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and a 10-20% tariff on goods from other countries.
Asian economies that benefited from the previous trade war—after China moved manufacturing to these countries to avoid American levies—may suffer this time around, as Trump is expected to balk at U.S.-China trade flows simply being rerouted through other countries.
Stephen Nagy, visiting fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs, tells TIME that he believes there will be pressure on Asian countries “to recalibrate or selectively diversify from China” lest they face tariffs too. “This likely means that it’s going to be more and more difficult for South Korea and Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asian countries, Australia, etc., in doing business with China, because they’ll also be subject to tariffs.”
Such a tariff-heavy foreign policy could significantly impact Asia’s trade-dependent economies. Southeast Asian states on average have a trade intensity—measured in trade-to-GDP ratio—that is double the global average, according to the Asia-based, trade-focused philanthropic group Hinrich Foundation. Al Jazeera and the Economist reported that global consultancy Oxford Economics found that Trump’s tariffs would make “non-China Asia” a net loser, with American imports from the region expected to fall by 3% and exports to the region expected to fall by 8%.
Multilateral trade partnerships in the region also face risks. Last year, Trump said he would junk the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework between the U.S. and 13 other countries, many of which are in Asia, if he wins the election. Trump “believes the U.S. is better able to leverage its strength and size by working on bilateral ties,” says RSIS research fellow Adrian Ang, adding that Trump doesn’t want to be “tied down” by multilateral agreements.
While the possibility of U.S. removal from multilaterals can leave Asian economies exposed, Ang clarifies that, just like Trump, governments around the world are “more prepared” and “more resilient” against a “more protectionist” Washington. For example, after the U.S. withdrew from the TPP, Japan took leadership, and the Comprehensive Trade Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal was launched in late 2018. The CPTPP aspires to be the “gold standard” for free trade agreements, and other significant economies like China and Indonesia have since applied.
Diplomacy
In his first term, Trump engaged with authoritarian leaders like North Korea Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Experts tell TIME that Trump is willing to engage with Kim again, given that he’s spoken of his relationship with the North Korean leader throughout his campaign, claiming it was their personal ties that stopped Pyongyang, which has been steadily nuclearizing, from launching missiles. “I get along with him,” Trump has said. “I think he misses me.”
Putin has also expressed interest in reviving Moscow’s relationship with Washington, which has languished because of U.S. support for Ukraine. Trump has suggested he would curtail that support as President.
When it comes to more traditional allies, experts think Trump, based on his transactional nature, will expect those in Asia to prove their worth. “They [the administration] will try and squeeze as much money as they can out of those allies,” says RSIS’s Chen, who adds that with Trump as the “final arbiter” of U.S. foreign policy as President, even countries that have established mutual defense treaties with the U.S. will have to convince him that they’re deserving of not being forsaken. Last month, Trump said he’d have South Korea—whom he calls a “money machine”—pay $10 billion annually to host U.S. troops in the country.
Since the election, Japan and South Korea’s leaders have expressed a desire to work more closely with Trump, but they’ve also already been showing that they are willing to pull their weight. Japan has pledged to hike its defense spending, and in 2022 it approved $8.6 billion to cover the cost of hosting more than 54,000 U.S. troops, who are mostly stationed in Okinawa east of Taiwan. Just before the election, Seoul and Washington inked a new five-year cost-sharing deal for the presence of more than 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. As part of the deal, South Korea will increase its contribution to 1.52 trillion won (over $1 billion) in 2026, an 8.3% rise from 2025’s planned spending.
Trump is also expected to veer away from “values-based” alliances, experts say. In his first term, Trump signed bipartisan bills against human rights violations towards Hong Kong’s democracy protesters and Uyghurs in Xinjiang. However, Grossman warns that Trump may be “more circumspect,” as he reportedly was at times during his first term, about non-economic measures that could harm his relationship with Xi and challenge any potential trade deals.
Regional security
“I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars,” Trump said during his election victory speech. But experts aren’t so sure.
During his first term, his administration came up with the Indo-Pacific strategy, which seeks to ensure that the region is “free and open” to all, amid China’s increasing influence and assertiveness and which has continued under President Joe Biden. Grossman, like other experts have previously told TIME, says he does not see any sign that Trump will abandon this strategy in his second term.
The South China Sea, however, despite being an emerging conflict area in the region, will likely not be high on Trump’s list of priorities, says NTU’s Liow. But the U.S. may maintain a certain level of commitment as it’s “viewed in the larger context of the competitive relationship with China, which is not going to let up.”
And on Taiwan, the self-governing island which China has long claimed and the U.S. has unofficially supported, RSIS’s Chen tells TIME that Trump may choose to avoid U.S. involvement in potential conflict by striking a deal with Beijing. In October, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you”—referring to tariffs—“at 150% to 200%.” When he was asked if he’d use military force, Trump said: “I wouldn’t have to, because [Xi] respects me and he knows I’m f— crazy.”
“Beijing might actually be able to take Taiwan without too much U.S. interference and if that’s the case I fear a greater kind of destabilization across the region,” Chen says, noting that allies in the region would be fearful that the U.S. is unilaterally dropping protections for other countries in Asia. And while Trump has promised to stop wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, Nagy, the Japan-based scholar, says he’s unlikely to try to do the same for the ongoing civil war in Myanmar. “I suspect he’ll say, ‘It’s not my problem. It’s the regional countries’ issue, and they need to deal with it,” says Nagy. “If they’re not willing to commit to dealing with Myanmar, then why should the United States put its resources into putting Myanmar back together?’”
Nagy also says navigating northeast Asia’s security threat will be different this time. “The equation has changed,” he says. On top of nuclearization, Trump is faced with a North Korea that has been increasingly tied with Russia. Pyongyang has supplied millions of munitions and deployed North Korean soldiers to Russia to aid in its fight against Ukraine.
Ultimately, experts suggest, if Trump’s anti-war stance means that he’ll negotiate with and make concessions to threatening players in the region like North Korea and China, then traditional allies in the region will resort to beefing up their firepower. “I feel that if countries cannot trust the U.S. nuclear umbrella then they might need to explore their own nuclear deterrent,” Chen says. It won’t feel safer. “It will be a tremendous mess.”
Leave a comment
