Trump and Asia: The price of a handshake

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

President Donald Trump’s return to Asia for the first time in his second term is being framed as a high-stakes diplomatic tour, a chance to reassert American influence through a series of critical summits and bilateral meetings in Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea. He will arrive to an audience of regional leaders who, despite being subjected to years of bullying on trade and defense, will likely greet him with a positive reception. The President will undoubtedly declare victory, pointing to massive investment pledges and potential trade deals as proof of his unique negotiating prowess.

But beneath the veneer of diplomatic handshakes lies a more troubling reality, one laid bare by expert analysis from a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) press briefing on the visit. This trip is not a showcase of renewed American leadership but a reflection of its erosion. It reveals a region scrambling to manage a transactional and unpredictable U.S. president, an emboldened China skillfully exploiting the ensuing chaos, and the faint, paradoxical emergence of a new economic world order forged in the crucible of American disruption. While Trump seeks short-term wins, he is accelerating long-term strategic shifts that may ultimately undermine American interests. The real story of this trip is not in the deals he will announce, but in the price allies are willing to pay for a moment of stability and the future they are quietly planning for without a reliable Washington.

ALLIANCE

When President Trump meets with leaders in Tokyo and Seoul, he will be focused on a singular message: Trump the moneymaker. He is expected to boast of securing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments for the United States, a tangible result of his tough trade policies. In Japan, his visit follows a trade deal that saw Tokyo agree to a staggering $550 billion investment in the U.S. over the next three and a half years. Combined with a similar agreement being negotiated with South Korea, the total figure could approach $900 billion.

On the surface, these figures look like a resounding success. In reality, they are less a sign of a thriving partnership and more akin to protection payments. Asian allies are not investing out of pure economic enthusiasm; their primary motivation is the desperate need for “tariff relief”. For years, they have been subjected to U.S. reciprocal tariffs and relentless pressure to spend more on defense. The investment pledges are a transactional solution to a transactional problem, a playbook countries have learned to use to placate a president who views foreign relations through a deficit lens. As one analyst notes, “everybody still wants to cut a deal with the U.S. president” because they simply cannot afford to be on the outside of his favor.

The fragility of these “deals” is evident in the ongoing negotiations with South Korea. While a potential $350 billion investment fund is on the table, the two sides remain far apart on the fundamental details. Key questions are still unanswered: Will the money be a lump sum or paid over time? Will it come as cash or loans? And, crucially, who decides where the money is invested—a U.S. unilateral decision or a binational review board? These are not minor details; they represent the difference between a genuine partnership and a massive payout with few strings attached for Washington.

This dynamic has fundamentally altered America’s role in the region. The post-World War II Bretton Woods system saw the U.S. as a leader in bringing stability to global trade and development. Today, according to experts hearing from the region, the United States is considered one of the “greatest sources of economic insecurity”. Consequently, while allies publicly accommodate the president, they are simultaneously and quietly looking at “contingency plans or plan Bs”. They are not yet acting on these plans, but they are actively thinking about how to manage a future defined by continued U.S. pressure. Trump’s exercise of power has been successful in extracting concessions for now, but its long-term viability is deeply uncertain as it pushes allies to hedge their bets against the very nation that once guaranteed their security.

CHESS FOR CHINA; CHECKERS FOR TRUMP

Nowhere is the consequence of this transactional diplomacy more apparent than in the U.S. relationship with China. The anticipated meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Korea is being billed as an effort to de-escalate a punishing trade war. But while Washington seeks a pause, Beijing is operating with the supreme confidence that it holds the upper hand.

Chinese officials have long believed their political and economic system could better withstand the pain of trade disruptions than America’s. Their confidence was validated earlier this year when their restrictions on the export of rare earths—critical for numerous global industries—forced the U.S. to seek a “rapid rapprochement” from a high level of tariffs. Having successfully inflicted targeted economic pain on politically important U.S. constituencies, such as soybean farmers, Beijing feels its strategy has been proven right.

As a result, Xi will not offer meaningful concessions without getting far more in return. China’s strategy is clear: offer tactical, temporary relief on issues important to Trump’s base while cementing its own strategic advantages. Beijing will likely dangle purchase commitments for agricultural products like soybeans, a critical issue for American farmers who have seen Chinese orders cut off since May. However, these are many of the same commitments offered in the first-term “phase one” trade deal that China subsequently failed to implement. It is a playbook of offering ephemeral wins to a president focused on headlines.

China’s real goal is to stabilize the relationship on its own terms, integrating its newly asserted economic weapons into a “new normal”. This includes the October 9th export controls that establish extraterritorial authority over items produced with rare earths from China, effectively giving Beijing control over entire global supply chains. They may agree to expedite export licenses for U.S. companies, but only on the condition that the U.S. creates a “positive atmosphere”—a vague demand that ensures continued leverage.

This is where President Trump’s approach becomes particularly dangerous. Unlike previous administrations that were careful to separate cooperative agendas from non-negotiable national security concerns, Trump is “very comfortable linking everything to everything else”. This opens a perilous door. China has always pushed the U.S. to make concessions on strategic issues like Taiwan or controls on high-end semiconductor technology in exchange for cooperation elsewhere, a linkage the U.S. has historically rejected. Now, there is a real risk that the administration could trade away significant strategic ground—for instance, granting China greater access to U.S. technology that can facilitate its military modernization—in exchange for a temporary purchase of soybeans. China is playing a long game, using Trump’s desire for immediate, tangible “deals” to achieve its own deep-seated strategic objectives.

ALLIANCE OF THE TARIFFED

President Trump’s disruptive approach extends across the entire region. In his dealings with ASEAN and other Asian nations, he has successfully employed a “divide and conquer strategy,” leveraging the threat of tariffs to force countries into individual negotiations rather than allowing them to form a united bloc. This has created what one expert describes as a “feeding frenzy,” where each nation scrambles to secure the best deal for itself, often at the expense of regional solidarity.

Yet, paradoxically, this relentless pressure may be planting the seeds of its own undoing. By weaponizing trade against allies and adversaries alike, Trump has created a shared experience of economic coercion. This common threat is mirrored by China’s actions. According to research, China’s weaponization of trade has become a regular feature of its foreign policy, used against hundreds of companies on every continent except Antarctica. For China, there is currently very little cost for this behavior and significant upside, as countries tend to cave to make the economic pain stop.

This global vulnerability has led to a provocative conclusion from some analysts: the best response to China’s economic coercion may not be tactical de-escalation, but rather a strategic escalation. This would involve forming a “collective economic deterrence framework” of allies and partners that promises retaliation if China continues its coercive practices, thereby imposing real costs for its actions. After all, economic interdependence is a two-way street; China remains highly dependent on the very countries it coerces for key goods and technologies.

The immediate and glaring obstacle to such a coalition is, of course, President Trump himself. He cannot lead an alliance against economic coercion while he is simultaneously “tariffing allies and partners”. But in his effort to put America First, he may be accidentally demonstrating why such a framework is necessary. By making the U.S. an unpredictable economic actor and normalizing the weaponization of trade, he is creating the intellectual and political justification for other nations to band together to protect themselves from such behavior—whether it comes from Beijing or Washington.

As President Trump tours Asia, he will measure his success in dollars and handshakes. But the true impact of his visit will be measured in the quiet conversations happening in capital cities long after Air Force One has departed. It will be measured in the contingency plans being drafted in Tokyo, the strategic calculations being made in Beijing, and the growing recognition across the region that the old rules no longer apply. The president will secure his headlines, but he is trading away trust for treasure, leaving behind a world more fragmented, more dangerous, and less certain of America’s place within it.