Prior to his inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump left little doubt over his aggressively unilateralist foreign policy doctrine. In a lengthy post on his social media platform, Truth Social, he openly warned against any direct challenge to America’s economic hegemony.
“We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty U.S. dollar or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. economy,” he warned referring to a proposed initiative by some members of the BRICS grouping to create a new independent currency for their expanding trade.
“They can go find another sucker. There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. dollar in international trade, and any country that tries should wave goodbye to America,” Trump added, both dismissive of and seemingly anxious about ongoing de-dollarization efforts of global trade. In response, India, a key member of BRICS and the world’s most-populous nation, quickly distanced itself from the BRICS currency initiative in order to ward off any potential tensions with the new U.S. leadership.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das flatly rejected plans to join any de-dollarization scheme by claiming that “[t]here is no step which we have taken that specifically wants to de-dollarize [which] certainly [is] not our objective.” If anything, he even questioned the viability of any new ‘BRICS currency’ given the “geographical spread of the countries…unlike [common currency systems like] the euro zone which has geographical contiguity.”
India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, was equally reassuring: “Right now, there is no proposal to have a BRICS currency. So I'm not quite sure what is the basis for [Trump’s] remark.” He also underscored differences among BRICS powers since “each country doesn't have an identical position on this.” Just days later, however, India secured a historic energy deal with Russia, worth potentially more than $100 billion over the next decade in order to solidify its booming economic ties with Moscow in clear defiance of Western sanctions.
The episode underscored growing concern over Asian powers on the need to not only prepare for a new age of disruption, but to also actively ‘de-risk’ from the worst aspects of a second Trump presidency. After all, Trump has vowed to “Make America Great Again” by, inter alia, ramping up sanctions on hostile powers such as Iran; imposing massive tariffs on rivals like China, as well as allies such as Japan and South Korea; and expelling millions of illegal migrants, including those from key partners, India and the Philippines. Paradoxically, Trump may end up expediting the transition towards a post-American order if he operationalizes his most extreme campaign promises on foreign policy.
Strategic Complacency
On the surface, at least, Asian powers have greeted Trump’s re-election with a mixture of insouciance and even cautious optimism. “We had a strong and solid relationship with the first Trump administration…Yes there were some issues mostly trade related but there were a whole lot of issues on which President Trump was actually forward leaning,” Jaishankar said during the Doha Forum in December. “I would say from our perspective there is a certain personal relationship between Prime Minister Modi and President Trump. In terms of politics, we really don’t have divisive issues,” he added, underscoring that New Delhi hopes to leverage personal diplomacy with the U.S. president.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had such a flattering phone conversation with Trump that he decided to share footage of it on social media amid much fanfare.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. also had a “friendly” and “productive” conversation with Trump, who even asked about the Filipino leader’s mother, former First Lady Imelda Marcos – a close friend of Trump from the Marcos family’s long stay in New York in the late-20th century. “We continued to talk about the relationship between…the alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines, and I expressed to him our continuing desire to strengthen that relationship between our two countries, which is a relationship that is as deep as it could possibly be,” Marcos said.
Other Asian leaders also made similarly optimistic prognostications. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached in December following his short-lived marital law declaration, also had an extremely friendly conversation with Trump shortly after the U.S. elections. "I am well aware of South Korea's world-class capabilities in building warships and ships. There is a need for close cooperation in the areas of ship exports, repairs, and maintenance," Trump told the then-South Korean leader, underscoring the depth of bilateral cooperation between the two allies.
The sense among Asian leaders is that they are properly equipped to deal with Trump’s predictable unpredictability and unvarnished ‘transactionalism.’ If anything, many will welcome the end of the Biden era virtue-signaling and emphasis on ‘liberal values,’ since majority of Asian leaders are neither Western-style democrats nor have welcomed American lectures on human rights and press freedom. There are, however, more than enough reasons to suspect that a second Trump presidency will turn out as substantially more challenging for both allies and rivals in Asia.
The Perilous Path Ahead
To start, the notoriously temperamental president will no longer be surrounded by the coterie of veteran generals, bureaucrats, and constitutionally-minded aides, who collectively served as a de facto institutional check on Trump’s excesses in the White House. This time around, Trump is packing his cabinet with loyalists and underexperienced ‘yes men,’ who will have little qualms with implementing his mostly extreme policies. Not to mention, ideologically-hardened figures who will oversee new draconian immigration as well as domestic law and order polices.
Meanwhile, even the more established figures in his cabinet are not necessarily reassuring. Senator Marco Rubio, the new Secretary of State and full-fledged ‘China hawk,’ is expected to take a tough stance on rival powers and, accordingly, press allies to chip in.
Ironically, Elon Musk, who has warned against destructive wars and oversees extensive business interests across Asia, could end up as a ‘moderating’ voice on this front. But it’s not clear how influential Musk will be in shaping America’s day-to-day foreign policy, especially given his own manifold commitments and focus on the fraught issues of public sector reform.
Accordingly, Asia will have to brace for a disruptive Trump presidency on multiple fronts. First, Trump’s obsession with tariffs as an instrument of economic policy could trigger a new and more devastating round of punitive measures, which could hurt not only rivals such as China but also key allies in Japan, South Korea, North America and Europe. The ensuing trade wars will not only drive up inflation in America and elsewhere, but also heavily affect the global economy and post-pandemic recovery.
Meanwhile, the second Trump administration is also expected and already attempting to institute stricter immigration policies, which could hit friendly nations. There are an estimated 300,000 illegal Filipino migrants in the U.S., while there are more than twice as many illegal Indians who could also face forcible repatriation in coming years. The humanitarian and financial stakes, therefore, are extremely high for Manila and New Delhi, which have depended on large remittances from overseas workers throughout the decades.
The biggest challenge, however, is geopolitical. Unlike the outgoing Biden administration, the incoming U.S. leadership will likely have limited patience for strategic hedging among allied and partner nations. As Elbridge Colby, a key architect of Trump’s National Defence Strategy, previously said, “[h]alf-measures are dangerous,” because “hedging doesn’t make sense” amid an intensifying New Cold War with China.
Thus, Asian allies will face simultaneous pressure to align with America's stance while grappling with concerns over Trump's inclination toward striking a "grand bargain" with rival powers. The Trump administration may also attempt to coax allies into armed confrontation with China in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait or, worse, sleepwalk into an all-out war in West Asia with a regional power, such as Iran. Overall, there is every reason for Asian nations, both allies and rivals, to prepare for and, if possible, counteract a new era of disruption under a second Trump presidency.
