Hold on tight! The US, Indo-Pacific, and expectations for a second Trump term

15 September 2023

Former President Donald J. Trump may not have been on stage for 23 August’s first Republican Party debate, but he was certainly on the minds of both his competitors and America’s partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific. Should a second Trump term become a reality, one can look to his first term as a harbinger of things to come. Across the spectrum of geopolitics, from multilateralism to trade and security, the re-election of Trump would usher in the return of “America First” transactional diplomacy, undermining America’s leadership and foreign policy goals in the Indo-Pacific. From embracing dictators and autocrats to besmirching allies and partners to advancing economic nationalism, a repeat of Trump’s haphazard and inconsistent approach to diplomacy has the potential to undercut and destabilise US partnerships and alliances throughout the region.

The Indo-Pacific, from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean, has been recognised across the American political spectrum as one of the most vital regions to US security, diplomatic, and economic interests. This region is poised to drive two-thirds of future global economic growth, holds over half of the world’s population and burgeoning middle class, and is home to numerous longstanding US allies and partners. As emphasised in various government strategies and documents, the US has an abiding interest in ensuring that the region is “free and open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.”

Trump viewed America’s alliances and partnerships as a net negative, reducing shared history, values, interests, and outlooks to simple transactions, embodying a “What have you done for me lately?” approach. Even Trump’s strategy towards China barely touched upon the ties that bind the US and its partners. His administration’s “Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China,” released in 2020, hardly made any mention of shared values with other democracies or upholding the liberal international order and was solely focused on the advancement of America’s unilateral gains. Indeed, there are continuities between Presidents Trump and Biden on their respective Indo-Pacific strategies, from a focus on a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) to a more confrontational posture towards China, including the extension of Trump’s trade tariffs and a desire in expanding America’s engagement of states in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. However, the similarities are dwarfed by the differences in attitude, approach, and execution.

Alliance mismanagement

Trump’s transactional diplomacy would pose a significant risk to the well-documented gains that the Biden administration has made in reassuring and bolstering US alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. An illustrative example can be seen in the US-Japan and US-Republic of Korea (ROK) relationships. During Trump’s tenure in office, he lambasted both Japan and the ROK, two of the United States’ most important allies in the region, as “free riders”, demanding that they each step up to the proverbial table with more money. Particularly worrisome was his threat to withdraw US forces if his financial demands were not met. In 2019, when the ROK and the US sought to negotiate the cost-sharing arrangement for stationing US forces on the Korean Peninsula, Trump sought to bully Seoul by raising the amount the ROK owed from USD 923 million to USD 5 billion a year, more than fivefold from years prior. The former president’s ultimatum sparked outcries in the ROK as Trump’s tactics were perceived as tantamount to betrayal. Trump tried the same approach with Japan the same year, requesting that Tokyo acquiesce to a 300 per cent increase in their yearly payments for stationing American troops, bringing the cost from USD 2 billion to USD 8 billion a year. While Trump pointed to the two allies as wealthy nations that should bear a greater burden, he ignored how vital the alliance structure is to US long-term interests in the region and its national security, and reduced it to a simple and unreasonable monetary transaction.

If Trump prevails in the 2024 election, and if his first term indicates what the region can expect from a second one, hold tight because it will get ugly.

Despite the turmoil that Japan and the ROK endured under Trump, the Biden administration was not only able to conclude cost-sharing arrangements with both countries in 2021 but also establish a historic three-way security pact in August 2023. While the election is still roughly a year away, the possibility of a second Trump term hung over the summit at Camp David like a dark cloud. In cementing the special relationship between the US and its two critical East Asian allies, the leaders recognised and sought to institutionalise the pact in case of that distinct possibility with Biden remarking that the goal was to “lay in place a long-term structure for a relationship that will last”.

Haphazard multilateralism

Despite laying the groundwork for the re-emergence of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with Japan, Australia, and India, Trump’s “America First” policy and inconsistent approach toward diplomacy threatened to kneecap the group before it kicked off. In the early days of the Quad 2.0, former Secretary of State Pompeo threatened to “disconnect” and sever the Five Eyes partnership with Australia over a Belt and Road Initiative deal that never materialised, while Trump instigated a mini-trade war with India by raising tariffs on Indian goods.

Beyond bilateral squabbles, the lack of tact and appreciation of the importance of coherent messaging and aligning it with Quad partners was also evident during the initial meetings. The Trump administration continually insisted on making the grouping an “anti-China” initiative, much to the chagrin of other members. During the October 2020 Foreign Ministers meeting in Tokyo, Pompeo proclaimed the Quad partnership was solely about confronting the Chinese Communist Party, while his counterparts framed the grouping in much broader terms that did not focus on any one country. Under Biden, the Quad has been refashioned into more than a hedge against China and has put forward an ambitious agenda from climate change to infrastructure development that seeks to support regional partners and allies by offering a viable alternative to overreliance on Beijing.

There have undoubtedly been some missteps in the implementation of Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy, including the decision to skip the 2023 East Asia Summit and US-ASEAN Summit and cut short his May 2023 trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea, which stoked perceptions that the US was not committed to the region. The bad optics aside, the Biden administration has been largely successful in bolstering its engagement and ties with Indo-Pacific partners. The last two years has witnessed the formalisation of the Quad, the aforementioned three-way security pact, the elevation of both US-ASEAN and US-Vietnam relationships to Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships (CSP), and the recent announcement that the US and Indonesia would also upgrade their relations to a CSP.

America First isolationism

Trump’s economic nationalism was evident from day one of his tenure in office when he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) agreement. As the centrepiece of his administration’s economic policy, the warning signs that he would only double down on his nationalistic economic agenda in a second term are already flashing. Abandoning the TPP sent reverberations around the Indo-Pacific. It undercut American credibility as partners lost confidence that the US could lead international trade relations, especially as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, and the organisation’s dialogue partners launched the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). These sentiments grew as the administration offered no path forward for economic engagement, sought to use national security and other trade instruments to raise tariffs impacting crucial partners, including Japan and India, and launched a 301 investigation into Vietnam. In recent weeks, Trump and Robert Lighthizer, the former US trade representative, said they would set an automatic ten per cent tariff for all countries, creating a “ring around the collar” of the US economy. Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, deemed the plan “lunacy” and “horrifying”, and other experts flagged that it could prompt an international trade war.

These isolationist tactics were not limited to trade but also to climate issues as Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. With climate change viewed as one of the most pressing challenges facing partners in the region, Trump’s decision frustrated and disappointed allies and partners alike. Without the US, developing countries are left in the lurch without the diplomatic and financial support of the US in adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

President Trump’s enduring legacy is the damage he inflicted to US credibility in the region. By the end of his term, almost none of America’s allies and partners had any faith that Trump could be trusted. Pew Research Center’s polling underscored this apprehension — only 18 per cent of Australians, 25 per cent of Japanese, 17 per cent of South Koreans, and 30 per cent of Indonesians believed that he would do the right thing in world affairs. From trade to the maintenance of alliances and partnerships, President Trump demonstrated just how fragile the US position as an Indo-Pacific power can be after the decades of hard work of countless US administrations, both Democratic and Republican. If Trump prevails in the 2024 election, and if his first term indicates what the region can expect from a second one, hold tight because it will get ugly.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Blake H. Berger is the Associate Director at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) in New York. His research focuses on Southeast Asia, US foreign policy towards the Indo-Pacific, multilateralism, the Belt and Road Initiative, and infrastructure development. Image credit: Flickr/Greg Skidmore.