The ASEAN Wonk Podcast

Our guest today is Julio “July” Amador, who was a civil servant in the Philippine government for more than a decade and now helps lead various organizations, including Fulbright Philippines, the Foundation for the National Interest, and FACTS Asia. We’ll start our conversation talking through current developments, including the South China Sea arbitral tribunal ruling anniversary and major power developments during the Philippines ASEAN chairmanship. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of other subjects, including the future of the U.S.-Philippine alliance, minilateral networking and evolving domestic political dynamics in the Philippines.

SOUTH CHINA SEA AFTER THE RULING ANNIVERSARY

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast July, and let’s start, if we can, on the South China Sea with us having seen recently the July 12th tribunal decision anniversary on the Philippines’ South China Sea case. You convened one of several commemorative events, and if I’m not mistaken, this is the first Track 1.5 initiative of its kind focused on ASEAN perspectives on this question outside of the Philippines held in Jakarta. We spoke a little bit earlier and you were saying it’s really important to engage more on this topic with respect to other Southeast Asian states, and also view this from a little bit more of a comprehensive perspective, looking at this not just from a security prism – whether it’s the South China Sea or the first island chain or the Taiwan Strait. What is your sense of how the anniversary played out and the regional perceptions on the ground on that front based on your conversations?

Julio Amador: Well, first of all, Prashanth, thank you for the invitation to join your podcast, and, of course, hello to all the listeners of ASEAN Wonk. I’m really glad to be here and, of course, to answer all of these questions related to the arbitral tribunal anniversary. This is the tenth anniversary of a very important and critical ruling, not only for the Philippines, but for the Southeast Asian region in general and also, of course, for those of us who advocate for international law. And now the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is a very important framework for Southeast Asia because many of us are archipelagic and maritime countries, and as such, we need the rule of law to govern our occasionally feisty relationships not only within ASEAN, but also with our neighbors, including those neighbors that may not be directly within the boundaries of our region but have an enduring interest in the safety and the security of the maritime areas, and, of course, the sea lines of communication.

So we organized the conference in Jakarta because I personally believe that the Philippines needs to convince but even listen to its neighbors in Southeast Asia with regard to the arbitration. Because if you recall the history of it in Southeast Asia, the Philippines launched this initiative, these proceedings against China in The Hague. One of the common complaints that you would hear is that the Philippines did not consult its Southeast Asian neighbors. That, I think, was a legal strategy. But now that we have this award, it’s very clear from those who are experts on international law that, first of all, this award is binding particularly on the Philippines and China. But at the same time, the award can become normative for the region because its many rulings can apply to the various maritime boundary delimitations and features in the various contested maritime domains within Southeast Asia and their immediate neighbors. In fact, we know that Indonesia has been using the ruling for negotiations with its own neighbors for their boundary delimitation. So we believe that the Philippines has a special task in convincing the region about the righteousness of this award and how that is applicable as a way of peacefully settling disputes within ASEAN and within the wider Southeast Asia. So this is why we believe that the commemorative conference would have had more impact if it was held outside of the Philippines and if it would consider also views not only from ASEAN, but even from our other neighboring countries. So that was the reason behind this initiative.

“[T]he award can become normative for the region because its many rulings can apply to the various maritime boundary delimitations and features in the various contested maritime domains within Southeast Asia”.

ASSESSING THE PHILIPPINES ASEAN CHAIRMANSHIP YEAR SO FAR

ASEAN Wonk: Just to double click a bit on the point you made on the regional dimension of Philippine foreign policy: we’ve just seen the recent round of ministerial meetings playing out with the Philippines ASEAN chairmanship this week. Obviously, it’s one of several factors – as you know having served in government before – of Philippine foreign policy, and if we define it comprehensively, this is one of several facets of Philippine foreign policy. How would you assess or what are the metrics you would use to analyze the Philippines ASEAN chairmanship so far?

Julio Amador: That’s a great question because we’re halfway there when it comes to the chairmanship. And some things to be remembered. First of all, the Philippines did volunteer to chair earlier because of Myanmar. So that has to be factored in when it comes to assessing whether the Philippines has been successful or not. But I think, in general, I would say that, facing a plethora of crises through its chairmanship – you have South China Sea, you have Myanmar, you have the Middle East crisis, including among others, the energy crisis that it has sparked – I think I sometimes wonder how the Philippine government is getting through all of this. Because, of course, you do not foresee crises happening, right, at the start of your chairmanship? But when this happens, you have to be agile enough to take them into account and that they have to be prioritized as well given the bigger and wider implications of those crises, not only on the Philippines, but on the wider region. And when all of these crises are hitting you, prioritizing becomes an issue.

So in that sense, also running government while chairing ASEAN I would think is a double challenge for those who are chairing ASEAN. And as you have seen, Philippine domestic politics is not the most boring in the region. With that being said, with those caveats, I believe the Philippine chairmanship is going as well as it could. Handling not only the daily concerns of ASEAN, but also the crisis moments that have been emerging that I have discussed earlier. But people forget that managing ASEAN is a very complex process. You’re looking at trying to balance some of the most powerful countries in the world, right? I mean, in many ways, in using many metrics, you have the United States, China, Russia, and then you have the European Union, of course, you have Japan, India, Australia, and so on. These are not easy tasks. The challenge of trying to bridge the gap or trying to convene great powers with various interests so to speak, and with differing purposes as to why they participate in Southeast Asian affairs is a daunting task for any country, and I don’t think the Philippines is an exception to that.

So having said all of that, the process has been going on well enough to be able to say that there have been some concrete accomplishments, right? On the ASEAN economic front, you have the adoption of the Digital Economy Framework Agreement, which is critical and which has been something that the Philippines has wanted to accomplish. Now on the political security front, despite the many challenges, I think the Department of Foreign Affairs has been doing some hard work, for example, on Myanmar. And, of course, there will always be disagreements on how it’s going to be done, but it’s not as if it’s the Philippines that holds the key to many of these problems. We don’t even want to talk about the Thai-Cambodian disputes precisely because both countries have different ways of approaching it. And this is a criticism of ASEAN. ASEAN doesn’t seem to be the first point of reference for trying to manage the disputes. Now I think the more important question is what happens to the proposed code of conduct? And I, for one, don’t foresee that coming this year. But I think we also have to appreciate the efforts being given by all of the negotiating states, including among others monthly meetings to try to come up with something solid on this front. Of course, I don’t think it’s going to happen – having an actual code – but I think the process is as important as the outcome in this case.

“Now I think the more important question is what happens to the proposed code of conduct? And I, for one, don’t foresee that coming this year.”

ASSESSING THE STATE OF THE US-PHILIPPINE ALLIANCE

ASEAN Wonk: The other piece you referenced a little bit earlier as well with respect to the conversation about major power dynamics is the U. S.-Philippine alliance itself. What is your sense of how the alliance is evolving thus far and the mix of inroads relative to challenges? In terms of the defense sites, in terms of foundational security agreements, in terms of traction on flashpoint management, I think we have seen progress. If you look at things like the Luzon Economic Corridor, if you look at minilateral security networking with Japan and other countries, they’ve moved slower than some alliance advocates would have liked. What’s your assessment of how the alliance is doing thus far beyond everyday flashpoint management and those narrower metrics?

Julio Amador: Oh boy am I going to get in trouble with some of the things I’m going to say, but what’s life without these things? Yeah. I mean, look. Some officials have described the alliance as something on hyperdrive right? I mean, it’s consistently going out there, strongest it’s ever been. And I don’t deny that particularly in the defense and military relationship – in those particular aspects, I don’t deny the strength of the alliance. And I agree that it’s the strongest that it’s ever been and that the coordination on that front has evolved to an extent that I couldn’t have imagined ten years ago. So I do believe that on the military relationship, things are very positive.

Now the question I’ve always had is about alliance management because there are no strong or concrete institutional aspects to alliance management, and some of these are quite nascent. The bilateral strategic dialogue (BSD) was put in place about a decade ago precisely to provide senior level management over alliance relations right? And the BSD was always a prelude to the two plus two ministerial meeting which provides the highest levels of alliance management so far – if you look at the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) itself, you don’t see any of those mechanisms because what we have in the Mutual Defense Treaty is a council of foreign ministers – but given the evolving character of the challenges that the alliance is facing, having a two-plus-two I would argue is a better mechanism. Please remember that if we look at the MDT strictly, the two-plus- two was never envisioned – but, you know, we deal with what we are given – having the BSD in place is quite important because that senior level management over alliance matters is quite critical. There was a joke before that the problem with the Philippine-US alliance that it was left to the hands of colonels because of the Mutual Defense Board and Security Engagement Board. And these are very capable colonels, mind you. What has always been missing is the policy oversight, and the alliance has managed to create this in the process over the years to respond to the challenges. And slow to be sure, but, you know, it’s better organized than before, I would say.

WHAT TO WATCH AHEAD ON SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY INTO 2027

ASEAN Wonk: The point you made earlier about where the alliance is and where flashpoint management is on South China Sea and ASEAN leads to the question of upcoming datapoints. President Marcos is going to have his State of the Nation Address (SONA) in the next few days were he’ll outline a series of priorities for the rest of the year into 2027. But from more foreign and security policy lens, what are you watching in terms of data points for the rest of the year into 2027 beyond the headlines of the day?

Julio Amador: Yeah, and I think…

Our guest today is Dr. Kaewkamol “Karen” Pitakdumrongkit, who is the executive director at the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) that plays a very important role in some of the regional geoeconomic conversations including in APEC. We start our conversation talking through some of the perceptions of current challenges in policymaking, including the Middle East conflict fallout. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of other subjects, including China’s evolving APEC agenda for its chair year this year and what to expect in the future regional economic agenda in a context where Vietnam will be chairing APEC in 2027 as Singapore will be chairing ASEAN.

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Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

STATE OF CURRENT REGIONAL GEOECONOMIC DYNAMICS

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast, Karen, and let’s start, if we could, on where we are now with respect to the regional geoeconomic policy conversation. You were recently at the senior officials meeting with respect to APEC. Your organization also does a number of surveys on an annual basis with respect to these geoeconomic perceptions. What is your sense in terms of these senior officials meetings and conversations with officials about where the regional dynamics and geoeconomic policy conversations are? It seems like a lot of the focus is around the Iran war and some of the geoeconomic fallout, and very interested in your perceptions about what you’re sensing from policymakers.

Dr. Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit: Thank you so much Prashanth for having me. Yes I am the executive director of PECC, but just want to make a quick note here that what I’m going to say is my own view: it doesn’t represent PECC’s view of positions. So yes, we just came back from the senior officials meeting in Shanghai. I and my colleagues were there and we had a lot of activities, like organizing some workshops or a general meeting which is our annual conference we do for ourselves and for APEC policymakers. The sentiments during the SOM-2 (senior officials meetings) and related meetings are concerning because we know we are in the midst of rising protectionism as well as energy shocks and also some energy issues – you know, the spillover from conflict in the Middle East. This actually seeped into the discussions during APEC. So we talked a lot about the implications of energy problems as well as geopolitics. But the atmosphere at APEC is very open because APEC is a nonbinding platform. So it’s actually open for discussion and sharing ideas, best practices and concerns. I think I feel that overall, the discussion was stimulating, and people there, APEC officials, are butting heads to try to figure out how to lessen the impact of external factors, external shocks like energy shocks on the region. I think we’re trying to find what would be the collective action that we can put forward to help the region navigate in this challenging time.

“The sentiments during the SOM2 and related meetings are concerning because we know we are in the midst of rising protectionism as well as energy shocks…you know, the spillover from conflict in the Middle East.”

HOW CHINA IS SHAPING THE AGENDA

ASEAN Wonk: China is chairing APEC this year and PECC provides support for APEC and some of these big geoeconomic conversations. Obviously a lot of this is in the shadow of the superpower summitry between the United States and China, and there’s a lot of focus about how the leaders of the United States and China will be meeting multiple times potentially this year: we’ve just seen the recent summit meeting happen between the two countries. Being in the room at these senior officials’ meetings, how do you sense that these meetings are going within China’s APEC agenda, which is much broader than just the US-China relationship?

Dr. Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit: Yeah. That’s a great question, Prashanth. Yes. APEC, as you know, is the organization with twenty-one member economies: definitely it’s bigger than China and US. China is doing very well on APEC so far. The theme is building an Asia Pacific community to prosper together. And this year, China chose to focus on three priorities. One is openness, two is innovation, and three, cooperation.

Openness, the focus now is on how can we show our support for multilateral trading system; how we can work toward a rule-based economic system that make it more predictable, make it more viable for businesses to operate. There is also a lot of discussion on openness about how to strengthen supply chain resilience and connectivity. There are a lot of APEC initiatives that we are seeing headway on like connectivity projects in three pillars – physical, institutional and people-to-people. For example, paperless trade: how can we make sure that electronic certification that could facilitate trade better. That’s about openness.

So the second priority is called innovation. So for this one, China focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) applications and also how to promote the interoperability of data standards or other standards across economies. Innovation also talks about how to enhance digital infrastructure as well as workforce digital literacy and AI skills. So we are trying to make inroads as we have a lot of focus on the digital economy. And the last one which just got endorsed by our leaders is called the APEC AI initiative. So it’s about shoring up cooperation within APEC on AI.

And last but not least, the third priority is cooperation. So under cooperation, it covers variety of things. It covers sectoral cooperation like on SMEs, human resources, energy, food security, public health, etc. So this one is broad but it’s actually very useful because cooperation focuses on how can you ensure that growth and development in the APEC region is inclusive. So because we have some groups that are falling behind – disadvantaged groups, women, etcetera. So that cooperation will ensure that these groups are benefiting from the growth and development in APEC.

NEW GEOECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES AMID CHALLENGES

ASEAN Wonk: Some of these priorities you mentioned are important and carry on from chair to chair, like artificial intelligence which was prioritized as well when South Korea chaired last year, or aspirational developments like the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) countries have been working towards for a long time. There are also a number of opportunities in areas like trade pacts with RCEP and CPTPP or sectoral agreements, in spite of the challenges we’re seeing as well. As somebody who’s very active in these conversations, how are countries balancing the opportunity side of this relative to challenges?

Dr. Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit: Definitely. Yes, we talk about challenges…we also talk about opportunity as well: how can we ensure that opportunities are complementary and also how can we work toward more promotional benefits. So in terms of opportunity, yes, we have, for example, under openness, we look at openness about how to support the multilateral trading system fostering the rule-based international economic system. We talk about FTAAP as well…to try to add more value to the conversation that has been going on the trade front. You mentioned TPP and also CPTPP, right? There’s a lot of free trade agreements being signed and being implemented. For example, RCEP…the project that APEC is trying to do is how can we construct or develop FTAAP. I just want to refer back to our state of the region report in 2022, where we had a question asking officials about how do you envision this FTAAP: do you think this could be a standalone negotiation or could we use existing FTAs as building blocks to develop the FTAAP? The overwhelming majority said that we should use existing FTAs like CPTPP or RCEP and perhaps expand them – add more members and that could help us build up to the larger Asia FTA covering Asia Pacific economies. That’s one thing that APEC discussion and also APEC inputs have added value to regional economic development.

Also, on innovation, yes, you mentioned about some progress being made so far to China. The there was a plan on some discussion right now to talk about whether we should do something that actually has additional progress. As you know, there was an APEC AI initiative endorsed by the leaders last year. So we are discussing whether we can have some high-level statement like this coming up at the end of the year [at APEC summit engagements in] Shenzhen. Would that be possible? So it’s still in the process of deliberating and discussion.

“So we are discussing whether we can have some high-level statement like this coming up at the end of the year [at APEC summit engagements in] Shenzhen. Would that be possible? So it’s still in the process of deliberating and discussion.”

But…I think the sentiment is that we need…some message from the high-level people, like leaders’ level, to actually propel the progress of AI so far. And for AI, I just want to maybe add a few things about PECC work that we have been doing to support on the AI/innovation front. We have a project on artificial intelligence, which has advanced discussion on many aspects of AI cooperation that includes SMEs, AI transformation that would include capacity building as well as AI safety and governance. So we hope that it would help feed into the APEC discussion and help them come up with ways to cooperate better on the AI front.

LOOKING AHEAD TO THE COMING 2027 GEOECONOMIC AGENDA

ASEAN Wonk: We’re going to be leading into some of the summit engagements later this year that China will be hosting, and then in terms of upcoming geoeconomic dynamics, Vietnam will be chairing APEC next year as one of the world’s most active users of trade agreements with the chair position moving back to Southeast Asia after being in Northeast Asia with China. How do you see geoeconomic dynamics manifesting in terms of the proceedings that we’ll see later this year and then into 2027?

Dr. Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit: Yes, this is…

[Note: This is the end of a free preview podcast, with the full version in an earlier post published on May 28, 2026 available to our paying subscribers. This is not meant to serve as new content and is part of our free preview content within the dedicated website podcast section].

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, where we bring you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I’m your host Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran. If you haven’t already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don’t miss our full posts.

Our guest today is Dr. Michael Green who worked at the National Security Council on Asia policy and is now the CEO of the US Studies Center at the University of Sydney. We’ll start our conversation talking about contemporary US Asia policy dynamics. Be sure to stay tuned as we also look ahead on other subjects, including what to expect with respect to future US policy in the region and the dynamics we might expect with upcoming midterm elections.

To receive full ASEAN Wonk posts and support our work, consider a paid subscription for $5 a month/$50 a year through the button below. For more on pricing for institutions, groups and discounted categories, visit this page.

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

US ASIA STRATEGY TODAY IN PERSPECTIVE

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast, Mike, and let’s start if we could on US Asia strategy more generally, with the caveat, of course, that we are in the midst of Iran war fallout and a president who has some of the greatest latitude we’ve seen in terms of policymaking in recent history. You’ve written what I would say is the most extensive book on the subject of US Asia strategy By More Than Providence, and that looks at US Asia strategy even before the founding of the United States all the way up to some of the contemporary dynamics that we’re sort of talking about. With the second administration of US President Donald Trump, there’s a lot of focus on some of the personalistic dynamics. I’m hoping that we can get beyond that and talk a little bit more about some of the structural realities and some of the measures of continuity and change. If you talk to administration officials, they point out that there are still some gains and signs of continuity in terms of security networking with Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, and some of the things that we saw in the first Trump administration like the Development Finance Corporation, some of the rebranded minilaterals like Pax Silica. At the same time, if you look at some of the big broader trends in terms of trade, in terms of values, and in terms of some of the aspects of the policy ecosystem, there’s some really dramatic change there as well. So having long been a professor yourself and also written a book on this subject, how would you grade the administration’s approach to Asia so far?

Dr. Michael Green: Well thanks Prashanth. It’s great to be an honorary ASEAN wonk for an hour and to spend time with a CSIS alum. How would I grade them? Gosh. I would send them to the school counselor for examination is the honest answer, but I wouldn’t expel them from school because there are, as you suggest, some real points of continuity. We’re in this strange situation where there has perhaps never been as much consensus on Asia, the importance of Asia, the nature of the strategic challenge from China, and the criticality of alliances. There hasn’t been this much consensus – and this consensus has been around for eight, ten years now – in the whole postwar era, but we haven’t had a president who is as disinterested or almost hostile to that consensus as we have with Donald Trump. So when my book came out, it was 2017, so it was the first year of the Trump administration. And the reviews were all generally very good, but some reviewers said, well, you know, that’s been a fine explanation for the last two hundred and forty years. But now that Donald Trump is president, America doesn’t have a foreign policy or strategy anymore. And, you know, actually, in the first Trump administration, they did. The National Security Strategy put out by the Trump administration was the first to say that our focus has got to be on strategic competition with China and with Russia. Officials like Steve Biegun at state, Matt Pottinger at the NSC, General Mattis, the secretary of defense, and a lot of others really built a kind of balance of power – what my old boss Condoleezza Rice used to call a balance of power that favors freedom – upgrading the Quad, strengthening the alliance with Japan. And the first Trump term gets reasonably high marks in places like Tokyo and the Philippines. Then the Biden administration continued a lot of it. The Quad, for example, which was made a foreign minister’s summit by Secretary Mike Pompeo, the Biden administration made a presidential level summit. They didn’t undo basically anything that the Trump administration done in Asia.

But then the second Trump administration turned out to be much more of a departure from that trend. And a lot of it is because President Trump himself clearly believes that he now has the authority and the experience and maybe even the mission to do big things. And what those big things are, it kind of changes from day to day. And so, you know, he’s not strategic at all, he’s extremely tactical. It’s day to day. He is interested in enhancing his ways and means, his reputation, his power, his tools. But what for is never clear, and I don’t buy these arguments that he believes in spheres of influence or that we are in a neo-monarchical [state], I think that’s just basically kind of the vibe or the mood or as he puts it his gut on any given day. So that makes it very hard to sustain strategy, and he’s appointed a lot of people who frankly think that the enemy of America is within. That’s not the best frame of mind to deal with strategic competition from without. So there’s a lot more uncertainty. But underneath it all, as you suggested in your intro, if you look at congressional views including Republicans, if you look at public opinion, if you look at military alliances in Asia, there’s far more continuity than change underneath the surface. And we can talk about how much the surface matters. It matters. But I don’t see us on a new trajectory. I see us in a period of incredible turbulence, but not a fundamental change in the way that the American system is going to be viewing competition in Asia for the coming decades.

RECONSIDERING “PIVOT” DYNAMICS AND CONTEMPORARY REALITIES

ASEAN Wonk: So another point you referenced earlier Mike is that there’s chatter with respect to this US episode with Iran in terms of “we’ve seen this playbook before” with respect to the war on terrorism and the Bush administration which you were in as well. My issue with that is that the world has changed pretty fundamentally in the last twenty years. We’ve had a war in Ukraine that has reinforced connectivity between different regions, rather than this notion that we were in the Obama administration of a pivot or rebalance to Asia. And in fact, some of the advocates of the pivot, including Kurt Campbell, have actually admitted that these realities are actually much more sophisticated relative to where they were twenty years ago. The US position is also quite different in terms of hydrocarbons from where it was twenty years ago. And the China challenge is a much more fundamental challenge today than it was twenty years ago as well. So how would you sort of think about this notion of the sort of evolution from the pivot and rebalance to where we are at now, where we’re seeing a lot more focus on hemispheric and homeland concerns. When I look back further at U. S. history, whether it’s the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Monroe Doctrine, these things are not exactly new. It seems like a rebalancing of US interests on Asia relative to the rest of the world.

Dr. Michael Green: Yeah. None of this is new in a way. I started my book By More Than Providence in 1783 because that’s when Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to the commander of US forces in the frontier, which was somewhere in Pennsylvania at the time, warning that our spies in London had learned that the British were planning an expedition across Canada to find a fast route to the Pacific Northwest and access to the Pacific Ocean. And Jefferson said to Colonel Clark, we need to find a way to get there first, which, of course, was a big part of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was geopolitical. So geopolitics is in the American DNA even if it’s sloppy and contested and inconsistent. I was actually surprised to find that when I did my research. What was going to be a two-year project became a seven-year project because there’s so much rich strategic debate about the Pacific in Congress, in congressional hearings, among men of letters. And so that’s one of the reasons, frankly, why I think we have to look at the Trump era not as a new unprecedented trajectory in American foreign policy, but a period of turbulence. And how much damage the turbulence does, we can discuss.

“So geopolitics is in the American DNA even if it’s sloppy and contested and inconsistent… we have to look at the Trump era not as a new unprecedented trajectory in American foreign policy, but a period of turbulence. And how much damage the turbulence does, we can discuss.”

I don’t think I put this in my book, I use it in class, but there’s a great cartoon by Herb Block, the famous Washington Post cartoonist you’re old enough to remember: he had a cartoon in the 1940s during World War Two, and it shows General MacArthur who commanded in the Far East meeting with General Marshall, the chief of staff of the army. And MacArthur has brought in a globe of the world to discuss strategy, and the globe is a cube, and East Asia’s on top. And Marshall says, well, you know, general, here, we prefer to use a round globe. And it was making fun of the fact that MacArthur wanted everything in North Africa and Europe put in second place or dropped to pivot military resources to the Pacific. And I do that at Georgetown in my class because I don’t want people who major in Asian studies to think that good Asia strategy is neglecting the rest of the world, and especially for the US, which is a global power, a two-ocean power, and all the rest.

And so I was in the White House on 9/11, I was in the White House during Afghanistan and Iraq. I did not go into meetings and say: we can’t be doing any of this. We’ve got to focus on Asia. I thought, how do we — and I was hardly alone in this [Richard Armitage] and many others — but how do we basically take advantage of this crisis to strengthen our alliances and partnerships in Asia? And I think sometimes advocates of Asia strategy think we can hit pause on the Middle East or on Europe, but especially on the Middle East because it’s such a quagmire. You keep trying to get out, you get pulled back in. But as Lee Kuan Yew said, Americans think geopolitics is a video game and you can hit pause in one part of the world and then come back, and nothing will have happened while you’re dealing with another. And Lee Kuan Yew actually recognized the US and Singapore’s and Asia’s interests had to tend to security in the Middle East, had to tend to security in Europe.

So I’m not an advocate of just ignoring Iran. And there’s a lot that the Trump administration did wrong with the Iran war in terms of their assumptions, poor planning, complete disregard for allies and for the congress and the American public. It’s a pretty long list. But the underlying challenge for Iran was not created by Donald Trump. The missile program in particular was potentially heading towards ten thousand ballistic missiles in a few years. Unacceptable. So you can’t just hit pause in the Middle East and hope everything will be fine. It’s going to take some level of resources. Now maybe more resources than we needed because of the way the war’s been prosecuted. We’ll see. But you have to have an Asia strategy within a global strategy. And I don’t know if you want me to talk more about Trump’s lack of strategy or what we see as continuity, but, obviously, one big feature of his second term is going to be Iran. And it’s undoing his presidency. You can see it in public opinion in the fights in MAGA. The effect on Asia is not – you know, people who say this is that he’s Bismarck and this is brilliant are wrong, obviously – but people who say this is a complete destruction of interest in Asia are also wrong. It’s a mixed picture, and I think you have to be balanced in how you look at it.

DEFENSE PERIMETER, ISLAND CHAIN STAKES AND SECURITY FUTURES

ASEAN Wonk: One of the things you mentioned with respect to MacArthur is the conversation around the defense perimeter and how the United States is looking at its worldview and its vision for the region. Some of the chatter around the narrowing of the administration’s approach to the first island chain, for example, and the implications for – if you’re looking at, say, Vietnam and the South China Sea, for example – there are some elements of change there and concern, which I understand. There are also some elements of continuity that I see as well: in the last couple of administrations, the Philippines has really cemented its role in terms of the US security architecture around the alliances, but also Guam, Hawaii, and so on and so forth with respect to Japan, Australia: the networking there is pretty intense. What’s your view on this notion of the defense perimeter and the forward defense line relative to what we’ve seen in other periods in history, including MacArthur, the Korean War, and so on: is it as much of a change, or do you see more continuity there with respect to the security aspect?

Dr. Michael Green: You know, drawing your defense perimeter – put it another way, where you’re willing to fight or risk war – is one of the hardest things in grand strategy. And in my book it’s a conundrum for American strategists for 250 years. In the book I wrote after that on Japan’s current strategy called Line of Advantage, it’s a conundrum. Where do you draw the line? Where do you decide you’re going to take risk? John Lewis Gaddis, in his book on strategy, says you need the discipline to sit inside the castle walls and listen to the villagers being burned alive or something like that. He’s obviously an advocate of clear defensive perimeters and being disciplined. And one of my old bosses, Steve Hadley, to say, you keep drawing red lines and you don’t defend them, you end up creating a red carpet. I love that line. And so it’s very, very tricky. I think one problem US strategists make sometimes is, to quote Homer Simpson, the great geopolitical thinker, sometimes they make the mistake of saying the loud part soft and the soft part loud. So when Dean Acheson in January 1950, after a review within the State Department of how to protect our interests and contain communism after the fall of mainland China to Mao, decided, well, don’t worry – it was a political thing as much as it was strategic for the Democrats – he said, don’t worry. We’ve got this very strong defensive line with the first island chain, which was all thinking in American geopolitics. And he had that famous line between Japan and Korea in January 1950, which was a red carpet. It was an invitation to Mao, Stalin, and Kim Il Sung to test containment and allow Kim Il Sung to attack six months later, June 1950. That was a mistake to draw that defensive perimeter so clearly. Of course, the Vietnam War had the flip problem, which is they didn’t know where the defensive perimeter was. So, you know, strategy is basically about reconciling two mutually contradictory goals. If you didn’t have mutually contradictory goals, you wouldn’t need to think about it: you just pursue your interests. But sometimes the goals compete.

But I do think we are guilty in the United States sometimes of drawing the line too crisply, too clearly sometimes, and too much. So to give you more recent examples – the National Defense Strategy that came out. It was a dog’s breakfast, as they say in Australia – it had all kinds of stuff in it, some of it was ridiculous – but it did have a very clear and very historic focus on, as you said, on defending the first and second island chain in the Western Pacific. But it was very reductionist, and this sort of follows Bridge Colby’s thinking about Taiwan being the major central front. It was very reductionist. So everything’s about Taiwan. And this is also a mistake because the defense of Taiwan is not just – and certainly not in the first instance – about military deterrence in North Asia and in the first island chain. I mean, that’s absolutely core to the strategy, but Beijing’s strategy is to win without fighting. So if you overly focus on the military deterrence piece – which is critical – but if that’s all you’re worried about, you neglect, for example, diplomacy and development in Southeast Asia or the transatlantic alliance. And the flavor of the National Defense Strategy, Bridge’s thinking is – I mean, he’s a smart guy, and he’s very focused on the core problem – he’s worried about U.S. resources. But the danger of being overly reductionist and drawing a very clear line around what you’re willing to fight for too much is you end up ceding in Phase Zero – in peacetime – strategic influence in Southeast Asia that allows China to flank you from the south with their own power projection or prevent U.S. access to the archipelagic southern flank, which is critical for access basing overflight and dealing with a PLA campaign strategy that’s the entire first and second island chain.

“[T]he defense of Taiwan is not just – and certainly not in the first instance – about military deterrence in North Asia and in the first island chain. I mean, that’s absolutely core to the strategy, but Beijing’s strategy is to win without fighting. So if you overly focus on the military deterrence piece – which is critical – but if that’s all you’re worried about, you neglect, for example, diplomacy and development in Southeast Asia or the transatlantic alliance.”

And it’s not a simple matter of deterrence as you know well from your work. It’s much more complicated. It’s about development. It’s about diplomacy. It’s about soft power. It’s about partnering with Australia, Japan, and others. It’s not a kind of John Mearsheimer simple war and peace, black and white issue. It’s complex. And if you get it wrong, you make it easier for China to fight without winning. And in a similar way, the transatlantic relationship: it is way too reductionist to say the central problem we have – the pacing threat – is dealing with the PLA on the Taiwan contingency so we don’t have time for Europe. And then to gratuitously sort of beat up Europeans and tell them we don’t want your ships in Asia. Life’s not that simple, and strategy is not that simple. And Beijing would love to have Europe remain neutral, NATO remain neutral in a Taiwan contingency.

And it’s not whether the order of battle changes because the Dutch send a frigate. It’s about the geopolitical dissuasion effect, the geopolitical cost imposition that NATO can impose on China. And so, like losing interest in the IP-4 – the Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand summits with NATO – the gratuitously fighting with Europe, especially right now, is just an onside goal. So yes, as a historian and a geography nut, I love the focus on the first and second island chain, you’re absolutely right. But don’t reduce the whole strategic problem to the military equation in the first island chain. Got to get that right. But if you get only that right, you lose anyway. So kind of a long answer. But a strategy, you know the famous dime construct, you need diplomacy, informational, military tools and economic. And I think part of the problem there is continuity for sure on the military side. For sure, we can talk about it. But the dime construct overall, we’re not performing on the d and i and the e in Asia. We’re doing a lot of good stuff on the m, and there’s a lot of continuity, which is why the alliances will survive. But in terms of strategic competition, we are not using our toolkit fully.

FORECASTING US ASIA STRATEGY AND POLICY FUTURES BEYOND TRUMP II

ASEAN Wonk: And on that Mike, just looking ahead, the conversation that we will get to as the midterms loom closer, diplomats and officials from the region will be asking including in allied capitals: how do we think about this question of Trumpism or America First after Trump in terms of US Asia policy? And what is that going to look like in terms of that sort of new bipartisan consensus around strategic competition, China, but also the famous DIME construct – and the very difficult balance that policymakers have to make between the security and military inroads where the United States has always led, and the difficulties on the economic, diplomatic, and informational aspects that we’ve seen?

Dr. Michael Green: Well…

[Note: This is the end of a free preview podcast, with the full version in an earlier post published on April 16, 2026 available to our paying subscribers. This is not meant to serve as new content and is part of our free preview content within the dedicated website podcast section].

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, where we bring you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I’m your host Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran. If you haven’t already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don’t miss our full posts.

Our guest today is Edmund Sim, an international trade lawyer and former official who has advised nearly all of Southeast Asia’s governments on a range of subjects, including navigating regional free trade agreements and the entry of East Timor into ASEAN. We will start our conversation talking through ongoing geoeconomic dynamics, including the state of US trade policy. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of other subjects, including the future inroads we might expect out to 2027 with respect to major powers and also within ASEAN in the regional organization’s geoeconomic agenda.

To receive full ASEAN Wonk posts and support our work, consider a paid subscription for $5 a month/$50 a year through the button below. For more on pricing for institutions, groups and discounted categories, visit this page.

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

FUTURE OUTLOOK ON US TRADE DEALS AND GEOECONOMIC DISRUPTION

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast Ed and let’s start on some of the Southeast Asia dynamics with respect to US trade deals after the Supreme Court IEEPA ruling last month. Talking to Southeast Asian officials, they had already factored in the potential contingencies with respect to the Trump administration we might see. And as you’re aware, the Trump administration has also begun rolling out parts of what they’ve called a Plan B with various section authorities and so on. We’ve had a number of Southeast Asian countries sign trade agreements already – Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia – and a couple of others, including Vietnam are in the state of talks. As a trade lawyer and former official, what do you think we can expect on US policy in the coming months, and what are the datapoints you’re watching?

Edmund Sim: Well thanks for having me Prashanth. I think where we are is in a state of transition, albeit temporary, between what the Trump administration had proposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and what we have now, which is under a different section of the law. The law in reference to the United States is the Trade Act of 1930. So they’ve resorted to using a section called 122, which deals with balance of payments issues, which historically were a bigger problem before the WTO (World Trade Organization) came into place. It’s under the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). So the president has this authority to impose tariffs of up to ten percent on a comprehensive basis on all imports, which he has done. And he has the authority to do that for 150 days. So we’re in that time period now. The issue and how this relates to the deals that were reached by the various Southeast Asian countries is that ten percent is, of course, less than what countries had negotiated with the Trump administration, ranging from eighteen percent to nineteen percent for most countries.

And it also affects countries that had no deal, like Singapore, which was at ten percent. And then now it potentially faces a higher duty because what’s happening is that right now, the duties are ten percent, but they want to reimpose rates that were negotiated with other countries. And so the administration is now working on a way to amend the ten percent in a way so that it applies to certain products from certain countries. And that might involve just pure amendment of this executive order that went into place previously. It may also involve applying a second executive order of up to fifteen percent. And so what you would have is the net effect of the two orders would impose ten percent for some products, for some countries, fifteen percent for others. So the net effect of all of this is to kind of get them to where they were before the Supreme Court ruling came out. But it’s not quite there. So under this authority that he does have under Section 122, he can’t really get the tariffs up all the way to the level that he had under IEEPA. So what that means is that countries that have already deals in place have to make a choice whether those countries press ahead or try to get some sort of renegotiation. If you’re a country that has eighteen percent, nineteen percent and you know fifteen percent is coming, you do face a choice theoretically of trying to delay implementation and just hoping that the fifteen percent would be what’s applicable rather than your eighteen percent or nineteen percent.

There are problems with this though. This Section 122 has a time limit. So they have until probably a hundred and fifty days after implementation to apply Section 122. And after, when you get to day 151, the president has to go back to the US Congress to get authorization to continue the tariffs beyond day 150. That’s one consideration, because the fifteen percent or ten percent as it may is a temporary situation. So what that means is that you don’t know what they’re going to do after day 151 if you’re one of the countries that have eighteen to nineteen. So whatever advantage you might have under the lower tariffs, it’s not going to be for that long. Second thing, of course, is that countries that go and try to renegotiate the terms could face potential negative blowback from the Trump administration, I think it’s difficult for some of the countries, particularly countries that were just before the Supreme Court ruling. Countries that had attended the Board of Peace meeting and everyone was supportive and all that, and then you turn around, you ask for a reduced rate. I think that wouldn’t go very well with the Trump administration.

“I think it’s difficult for some of the countries, particularly countries that were just before the Supreme Court ruling – countries that had attended the Board of Peace meeting and everyone was supportive and all that, and then you turn around, you ask for a reduced rate. I think that wouldn’t go very well with the Trump administration.”

And the third point is that we don’t know at this point exactly what type of permanent solution they’re going to have with regard to the U. S. law authorizing the tariffs. So they’re talking about using other sections of the law to impose the tariffs. So they’re talking about Section 232, which is national security, Section 301 for deals with trade barriers. And the president also mentioned Section 338, which is a very old section of the law, which dates back to over one hundred years. And the key thing about 338 is that it allows the president to post tariffs of up to fifty percent – five zero – against countries which have been deemed by the president to have discriminated against American products. So this has not been used in over one hundred years. It predates the World Trade Organization, the GATT. And so for that reason, it hasn’t been used. But it’s still on the books. And invoking that would mean a major shift away from international trade norms like most favored nation. But the potential is there for fifty percent. So unlike these other tariffs so you have a fifty percent potential authorization.

And under the Trade Act of 1930 authorizations, there’s no limit. So 232, he can impose higher rates above fifteen percent. And 301, he can impose rates above fifteen percent. So what all that means is that if you’re a country looking at the immediate implementation of the agreements that you’ve already reached or you’re almost going to reach, do you take what you already have or take a chance of what could happen? And given how the administration has changed the rates and has not been shy about adjusting the rates for purposes other than trade – so for example, the Cambodia-Thailand border dispute and the Trump administration used tariffs as a way to get them to the negotiating table – you have a situation where tariffs can be adjusted at any time, then there’s an understandably great reluctance to revisit those tariff rates.

So in the short term, I don’t see any of the countries in Southeast Asia knocking on the door and saying we would like to revise the rates. I think they’re going to stick with those deals. In the medium term, the longer term, the bigger issue besides the tariffs are all the other implementing conditions of these agreements. So for some countries, while all the countries agree to let in more American products at lower rates, that’s going to be problematic in some industrial sectors and agricultural sectors in Southeast Asia. You’re already seeing some pushback on ratification in countries such as Malaysia publicly and then not so publicly in Thailand and other places where there were very strong agrobusiness interests in those countries that don’t necessarily want to see American products come in. And there’s also the issue about signing up to other things such as the [Pax Silica] agreement or commitments to work in the supply chain.

And crucially, one of the biggest issues is this issue of transshipment. Because at the moment, these agreements all have commitments by the ASEAN states that signed up to prevent transshipment of goods from other countries – i. e China – from coming in and taking on the origin of the local country and then coming in under lower tariff rates. Because at the end of the day, really what a lot of this is aimed at is trying to “de-Sinoize” or reduce the China level of content in products coming into the United States. And so transshipped goods arguably are predominantly Chinese, and they’re really Chinese goods with a new coat of paint or a new mark saying they’re from Southeast Asia.

“Because at the end of the day, really what a lot of this is aimed at is trying to “de-Sinoize” or reduce the China level of content in products coming into the United States.”

The problem we have fundamentally, which has been raised by the ASEAN countries, is that the United States follows a legal approach to determining whether a product comes from China or some other country based on a pretty subjective legalistic approach called substantial transformation: you look at how the good is produced and what you do to process and then what comes out at the end of the production process. But in Southeast Asia and most of the world, like the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA), those rules of origin – the rules that assign nationality to a product – those are based on value added. And so it’s more objective because you’re looking at numerical cost information, price information; you’re not really looking at the processing involved. So there is a fundamental inconsistency between the U. S. approach and the rest of the world and Southeast Asia’s approach. And it’s been that way for years. And so how you bridge the gap between the two approaches is going to be very important in that point of view.

So that’s a medium-term problem. It’s going to have an immediate impact on countries that have taken on a lot of Chinese investment to manufacture goods with Chinese inputs. And so especially [Indochina] and to a lesser extent, Indonesia, have benefited a lot over the last seven to eight years from Chinese investment. And trying to adjust away from that is going to be a big issue. And so I think these are the short term and medium-term issues for all these governments in the region. It’s not just a matter of thinking that these changes will go away after a midterm election in November 2026 or go away after a new president comes in in early 2029. A lot of this stuff is going to stay. The U. S. government now has shifted its tax base to a great extent away from a primarily income tax-based system raising revenue to one of which a large percentage of the revenue is coming in from these tariffs. And so that’s not going away. That’s not going to go away with a change in the legislature. It’s not going away with a change in the presidency.

So it’s something everyone’s going have to live with because notably, the United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not have a national sales tax. Well, the tariffs that were imposed through Liberation Day under IEEPA and now under 122 and now and foreseeably under these other sections, that’s pretty much a sales tax. And so you have to think about the revenue generation point of view, not just from the foreign point of view or effects of trade. And so what that means is that in the region, you’re going to have to think about what the long-term effects are. You can’t assume that these are all going to go away in two or three years. They’re here to stay. In what form, in what manner, that’s an open question: what a new government would do or a new president would do regardless of party. So it’s not a matter of waiting it out and waiting for the weather to change, so to say. This is a fundamental change in the trade and investment climate with the United States.

WAYS TO MANAGE GEOECONOMIC RISKS BEYOND BUSINESS AS USUAL

ASEAN Wonk: Right. And just to situate ourselves, we’ve seen a number of datapoints coming out of the region as well. One of those, which we were talking about just before we started recording, is the first ever ASEAN geoeconomics report which we saw released. If you talk to officials that were involved in the drafting, they say this is a pretty significant datapoint in the region’s evolving geoeconomic landscape. The report notes the need for a decisive shift away from business and usual and not just managing short term risks just like you were talking about – accommodating the administration, signing short term deals – but also recognizing that this is a pretty fundamental shift and also one of many shifts that we’re seeing in the geopolitical and geoeconomic climate. And there’s also a need to do things like accelerate regional trade agreements, delivering on the many ambitious goals that ASEAN has talked about over several years, but there’s a lag in terms of actual implementation and monitoring. So you’ve written whole books about things like the ASEAN Economic Community and used to manage a blog on the ASEAN Economic Community which I and others read pretty assiduously. And you’re very familiar with these documents and the gap between rhetoric and reality. What are your takeaways are from the report and the climate in the region as opposed to the weather that you were talking about to capture the kind of moment this is for Southeast Asia and ASEAN?

Edmund Sim: Yeah. I think the report is important because it’s a product of the times. And so they specifically went out and named the United States revised trade policy as the instigator for this rethink of ASEAN trade and investment. And so if you read the report, a lot of the content is aimed at dealing with the changes in the US trade policy around the world. And so that’s a shift in ASEAN as an institution approach because traditionally, they haven’t been willing to name names or identify causes of the climate change, so to say, using this analogy. What is interesting is what is not said. So and again, this is from an American point of view, when you read it from that point of view and you read the report, what’s not said? Who’s not mentioned? Well, China is not mentioned. There’s no mention in there about how if you have to deal with the United States and you have to approach the United States in a different way and you have their concerns, there’s no mention very much about how to deal with China, how to deal with issues related to Chinese investment and trade in the region. And as I said in the previous comment, it is difficult because many industries have benefited from Chinese investment in trade. On the other hand, not everyone has. I mean a lot of the goods that were destined for the United States now are in Southeast Asia. So you have many industrial concerns in the region who are not happy with the increase of imports coming in from China. Yet there’s nothing in there directly naming names with regard to China.

Another country that’s not mentioned is India. There’s language in there talking about RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership], but as we know, India famously elected not to join RCEP. And there’s no language in the report about revisiting that, like whether it’s worth going back to talk to India about joining RCEP now that the conditions have changed. There’s been no mention about re-approaching India. And I think a lot of that has to do with Indian politics. But if you’re really looking at this as a long-term view, reconsidering an approach to India is important because they’re also a major player in the region. And the final part on who’s not mentioned is the European Union. I mean, Europe is a major investor in the region. It is a potential source of investment and trade. Several countries have free trade agreements with the EU, but the report doesn’t say anything about that. So in some ways, the geoeconomic report is important because it does break a bit from ASEAN’s traditional reluctance to name names and call out countries on policy. But on the other hand, there is a lot of it that’s still in the old approach of not singling out countries and not identifying countries.

So I think it’s a good thing. I think it does focus minds. The question is, does this focus ASEAN to look internally at how it operates in terms of implementation? So, from the internal ASEAN point of view, there was a lot of language in there, especially from the private sector. They know that they were talking about implementation. And what that means is that there are many, many ASEAN agreements dealing with aspects of the economy. The question is, are those agreements being implemented on the ground? Do you have effective ways to integrate into the single production base, single market that is contained as a goal in the ASEAN Charter? And this has been a longstanding complaint of the private sector – both foreign investment and local investors about making it easier to do business within the region. So in some ways, you still have internal competition at the regional level among countries – one industry against another country within ASEAN. And that competition historically creates non-tariff barriers – things such as [phytosanitary measures] for plants, health measures to prevent goods from crossing borders for agricultural products, industrial standards of barriers, other barriers. And ASEAN has gone, frankly, a long way to addressing some of those, but it takes a long time.

“There are many, many ASEAN agreements dealing with aspects of the economy. The question is, are those agreements being implemented on the ground?...And this has been a longstanding complaint of the private sector – both foreign investment and local investors about making it easier to do business within the region.”

And the thing mentioned briefly somewhat in the report is a need to increase not necessarily the power of the ASEAN institutions, but the effectiveness. It is not realistic to expect the ASEAN Secretariat to have the authority of the European Commission, despite the fact that that’s usually the comparison model that we always talk about. However, it is possible to improve the flow of information, the monitoring, the assessment. And one way I do think the report comes into play is that if ASEAN is willing to identify the United States as a cause of the climate change, is ASEAN willing to identify particular countries and particular industries within ASEAN as being necessary to deal with that climate change in terms of trade and investment? And I didn’t quite see that in the report, but that’s understandable because that’s been a major structural or cultural issue for ASEAN since the first concepts of dealing with the first economic crisis in the 1970s with the energy crisis and the commodities bust that we had in the 1970s that’s been a real sticking point in implementation. So that’s something that needs to be done.

Of course, I’m a lawyer. I would like them to address this through law. But I also understand ASEAN is a different kind of institution. Southeast Asia is different. It’s going to have to be a combination of law and policy. And it is something where both economic and other resources and power is going to have to be joined up with law to get us into a place where they can handle stresses within the market, stresses within the production base. Because if they don’t do that, then the ability of ASEAN is going to be hampered. The ability to deal with these climate changes with regard to the world investment and trade, that’s going to be hampered if they don’t get their act together. Because no one country in ASEAN – okay, you can argue that some countries are bigger than others – but fundamentally, all the countries are much better off working together through the ASEAN institutions than dealing with other trading partners such as the United States, such as China, EU, India. They’re much better off working together and rather than individually.

But you can’t work together unless you get your internal operations working in a more effective manner. And that’s something that has to be done. So it’s not like we’re talking about having complete flow of people across borders. That’s a very sensitive issue. But I do think they can make it easier for flow of money, flow of capital and investments, flow of people, of goods and making it so that it is easy to operate in the region. Because without that, it will be very difficult for the group to operate when you have internal competition and each one trying to outdo the other on bilateral deals with the trading partners. This is not going to work, and it goes against “ASEAN centrality.” It goes against what is the intended goal of the ASEAN Charter, which is to improve the welfare not just of the nation state, but also the people who live in those nation states in ASEAN.

TOP FUTURE GEOECONOMIC AGENDA ITEMS TO WATCH INTO 2027

ASEAN Wonk: Right. And that gets me to my next question, which is the follow through and what we might see the rest of 2026 and into 2027. There’s a lot of talk and conversation around this notion of understanding the world from more of a sort of G-Minus 2 prism – what other countries are doing in engaging Southeast Asia apart from the United States and China and vice-versa. There’s a gap between rhetoric and reality, but, in fairness, we’ve seen manifestations of this – Canada is working on a free trade pact with ASEAN which will have significant implications on North American geoeconomics, and Singapore and others have come up with FITP addressing sectoral areas like supply chains. There are also a number of intraregional geoeconomic agenda items like the Digital Economic Framework Agreement which will be quite significant once it is in place, and a number of other frameworks in area like artificial intelligence. What are some of the top priorities that governments and businesses that you talk to are watching in the geoeconomic agenda, not just for the rest of this year but also 2027? Because Singapore is going to be ASEAN chair that year, and Singapore has been very active in a number of these geoeconomic areas.

Edmund Sim: Yeah I think the….

[Note: This is the end of a free preview podcast, with the full version in an earlier post published on March 12, 2026 available to our paying subscribers. This is not meant to serve as new content and is part of our free preview content within the dedicated website podcast section].

INTRODUCTION

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, where we bring you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I’m your host Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran. If you haven’t already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don’t miss our full posts.

Our guest today is James Crabtree who has held several prior roles including senior adviser to the British prime minister’s strategy unit and director of the IISS think tank in Singapore where he helped run the Shangri-La Dialogue. He’s currently among other things a distinguished visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. We’ll start our conversation talking through some of the dynamics in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the broader geopolitical and geoeconomic canvas. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of other subjects, including the future agenda for Europe-Southeast Asia policy in the coming months, as well as related topics, including emerging areas of geoeconomic cooperation in Indo-Pacific capitals and shifting views on China.

To receive full ASEAN Wonk posts and support our work, consider a paid subscription for $5 a month/$50 a year through the button below. For more on pricing for institutions, groups and discounted categories, visit this page.

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

EUROPE’S GEOECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast James. And let’s start, if we can, on the series of geoeconomic deals that we’re seeing coming out of Europe over the past year. We’ve seen just recently deals coming out with India. There’s one with Mercosur. If we go a little bit further back, we’re seeing a number of Southeast Asia negotiations as well, including with Indonesia, which even some officials admitted they didn’t really see coming because it had been going along for quite a while. How do you see this geoeconomic momentum fitting into where Europe sees its role, not just in Southeast Asia, but also the Indo-Pacific and globally? Southeast Asia is Europe’s third largest trade market after the US and China, but to what extent are some of the dynamics new here?

James Crabtree: Well so thanks very much for having me. You know, as with almost everything in life at the moment, it comes down to the Trump factor, which is that Europe has a kind of geopolitical crisis on its hands in as much as since the end of the Second World War. It has had a very close relationship with the United States and, to put it mildly, that relationship is a bit rocky now. And so it’s looking for new friends. What India would call a policy of multialignment is now something that Europe is trying to do. It’s trying to hedge and diversify. And so if you look at what does that look like, then Latin America, the Mercosur deal, has been on the cards for an awfully long time, but is now to some greater or lesser degree being signed and will come into force. There was a little bit of a hiccup because of a kind of cock-up in the European Parliament, but I think the sense is that they’ll get over that and that will come into force. Ursula von der Leyen was recently in the Middle East trying to do a little bit of Middle East diplomacy. And then the big one is India which we’ll talk about in a minute, the EU India free trade agreement which happened recently.

And so I think as is true with many other countries – in India, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere – a world in which the United States is less reliable and more coercive is one where traditional U. S. allies and partners have to look around and see what else is out there. And in a sense, it’s no more complicated than that. Europe is looking for new friends both at the kind of geoeconomic level, but also at the geostrategic level and it’s trying to build what it can to make up for what it’s lost in terms of this newly unreliable relationship with Washington.

EUROPE AS AN INDEPENDENT POLE IN MULTIPOLAR CALCULATIONS

ASEAN Wonk: And just to follow-up on that quickly. We’ve seen some European officials try to make the case that in this current geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape, countries and regions need to be thinking about Europe and the European Union as an independent pole or actor, not the archaic notion of the traditional transatlantic relationship where Europe is thought of as mostly an economic partner, not really a security partner. To what extent do you find this is a credible argument to make today and how do you see countries and actors rethinking how they are seeing Europe as an actor?

James Crabtree: I think it’s almost the other way around: I think the partners got there before the Europeans. So the line that you’re quoting that Europe is an independent pole in a multipolar order is not actually a line from a European, it’s a line from Dr. Jaishankar, the Indian external affairs minister as I think you probably know. And in a sense I think that India for instance has looked at Europe for a long time – I mean for at least the last five years – and thought that in the world in which we’re heading form then we need to treat Europe as a as a pole on its own that is separate from the United States and other relationships. And I think in a funny way, it’s almost taken Trump for the Europeans – I mean, maybe not the French – but for many of the rest of the Europeans who are pretty strongly Atlanticist to kind of make a psychological break with the United States to some greater or lesser extent. We don’t know what this will look like in the medium to long term, but for now anyway.

And I think here, Europe has a strong story to tell, maybe stronger than it realizes. As in, if you’re sitting in Malaysia or Indonesia or Singapore and you’re thinking about, okay, the US is less reliable: what are our diversification plays? Then you have Northeast Asia, the advanced democracies of Asia, you have India, you have the Middle East, Canada maybe, but really Europe is one of the big opportunities that any country that is looking to hedge and diversify would look to. To be fair, Europe is geopolitically declining relatively speaking, but it is still full of rich technologically advanced nations. Europe is also rearming. It’s spending a lot more in its military. And therefore an argument that I’ve been making for the last two years really is that the story that Europe can tell about itself is very different post Ukraine than before Ukraine. The notion that Europe was this sort of slightly peculiar postmodern trading conglomeration that didn’t have anything to say in terms of hard security, well, it’s not really true anymore. No – this is a continent and a European apparatus that has been at the very forefront of the most important military conflict in the world that has been raising money to fund that conflict that has been trying to manage geopolitical relationships around that conflict.

“And therefore an argument that I’ve been making for the last two years really is that the story that Europe can tell about itself is very different post-Ukraine than before Ukraine. The notion that Europe was this sort of slightly peculiar postmodern trading conglomeration that didn’t have anything to say in terms of hard security, well, it’s not really true anymore.”

And so if you take Europe – not just Brussels, but within Europe, you have four or five of the world’s most capable middle powers. So the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine itself, and then if you add Turkey into the mix as a NATO member, that’s six serious global middle powers. Not major powers in the sense of China, Russia, India, but capable military middle powers. And I think if you add that together, then in a sense that is why India would say that Europe is a pole in a multipolar order. And I think it’s actually been the Europeans that have been slow to tell that story about themselves and only lately have kind of caught up with the way some of the rest of the world has viewed them.

EUROPE AND THE GLOBAL MIDDLE POWER CONVERSATION

ASEAN Wonk: The other piece of that is the changing geopolitical perspective not just in Europe, but also within European countries as well. It’s difficult to get away from the remarks of Canadian prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos and his notion of a moment of rupture and the need for middle powers to collaborate, and I agree with what you said earlier that parts of the region, including Southeast Asia, have been ahead of this conversation already. But to what extent do you think Europe fits with this middle power conversation? Because as we both know, even with the term middle power, there’s ambivalence in some capitals about using the term and accepting a hierarchy of powers. And within that, are you seeing changing notions within Europe about how to think about its own geopolitical and geoeconomic map and diversifying more globally?

James Crabtree: Well I think if you look at the Europe India event that happened recently at the Brussels level then that moment was in a sense a pan-European moment. And so some of these agreements happen at the Brussels level in that it’s Brussels that makes the big trade deals. But there are a number of other kinds of competencies which can sit at the European level, and Ursula von der Leyen is probably the most recognizable European Commission president in a long time. So in a sense I think Brussels and Europe is now taken more seriously as a strategic as opposed to a trading partner. And so on the one hand, you can see Europe in terms of its economic and increasingly to some degree in terms of its strategic weight in that group of the world’s largest powers – the European Union in some ways sits next to the United States, China, India aspirationally and to some degree Russia as part of a grand block.

But then within that, you also have the European middle powers. And in some areas, particularly defense and security, these relationships are still predominantly bilateral. And therefore, India is buying French Rafale jets and German submarines and it might be striking a trade and sort of security deals with technology with the United Kingdom for instance. So I think it’s a little bit more complicated because you have this both transnational and national element with Europe. But I don’t really think there’s been this sort of jarring fall to earth in which European nations are struggling to conceive of themselves as global middle powers. I mean, that may have been true sort of twenty or thirty years ago, but, I think now, anyone in a European capital – well, I mean, in the big ones, the ones that I mentioned – would conceive of themselves as high-capacity global middle powers who are able to do things within the global system. But they are not able to operate at the same level as the really big countries. And I think that’s fine, you know? I mean, one of the things that Europe does have is it has quite a lot of these sort of capable high-tech prosperous middle powers. And therefore, particularly if they act together, then they have quite a lot of weight still in in the global system.

And again, that’s not me saying this as a kind of European. I think that’s what others see. That’s what Southeast Asian nations; that’s what India sees. And in a funny way, the Europeans are not as easy to deal with as the United States because there are lots of them and they’re complicated. They also don’t offer you what the United States offers. They don’t have whacking great big tech companies for instance in the same way. But they are sort of reasonably reliable in a way that the Trump administration isn’t. They’re certainly not erratic in the way that the Trump administration is. And therefore, you’re looking for a sort of set of powers with whom you can do business, then – this is the same with Japan or South Korea – they offer something that many countries see as quite valuable.

ASSESSING VALUE ADD IN PARTNERSHIP DIVERSIFICATION

ASEAN Wonk: And to that point and to follow-up, in this period of diversification lies the big perennial question, which is, to what extent do each of these individual actors produce a sort of value add within this landscape? One thing that strikes me in Southeast Asia is that despite the notion in Washington that Europe is associated with regulation, some of the regional governments are pretty comfortable with regulation and rulemaking. If you’re looking at Europe and the European Union, would be that sort of value add in terms of opportunities that Europe offers?

James Crabtree: Well, I think it’s complicated, right? There are things that the European Union does at the Brussels level which countries in Southeast Asia don’t like at all. So the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is one of the ways: it’s a sort of European tool to try and manage climate change, to some degree penalizes poorer countries. They hate that. And so that bit of European rulemaking they strongly dislike. There are other rules that Europe has which are not very popular. But at a sort of more basic level, particularly when you’re thinking about Southeast Asia, then there’s a kind of underlying agreement that although countries in South and Southeast Asia tend not to be very keen on what we used to call the liberal rules-based order, they are keen on a rules-based order. Most of them are small to medium sized countries, and small to medium sized countries do not like the idea of a kind of gradual collapse back into a world in which the strong do what they can and the weak do what they must. And therefore there is a kind of congruence between European nations and Southeast Asian nations.

So for instance, if you take something like wanting to have UNCLOS and rules of the sea, then actually having European nations around is quite helpful. Because they give some ballast to the idea that these are rules that cannot simply be kind of ripped up by great powers at their whim. So I think I think at a basic level, both Europeans and Southeast Asians – and actually it’s true of India as well – they might disagree over what the rule should be in a rules-based international order, but at least for now, they do want to have an order that is rules-based albeit not liberal. You know, one of the things that Europeans have learned to do is – as a friend of mine in Germany who had the line which he used at the last Raisina Dialogue – to be less strategically obnoxious. And so they sort of ceased to a large degree going around in South and Southeast Asia wagging fingers and talking about human rights and generally annoying people. That has helped because in neither jurisdiction did anybody particularly welcome being given lectures by Swedes and Dutch people about the state of their internal politics. And so to the degree that Europe has kind of put a lid on that, then that has helped.

“So for instance, if you take something like wanting to have UNCLOS and rules of the sea, then actually having European nations around is quite helpful. Because they give some ballast to the idea that these are rules that cannot simply be kind of ripped up by great powers at their whim.”

In terms of what Europe has to offer, it’s pretty clear: it’s still the world’s largest market and therefore the trade deals are huge. If you are in the business of striking trade deals, European Union is one of the most important ones that you can strike. For Southeast Asia, it has over recent years been the most important trading partner – I don’t know kind of where it stands with China at the moment, but it sort of been there or thereabouts in terms of the most important trading partner. Technology I think would be the second thing that I would point to. Again, as I said before, not as easy as the United States because it doesn’t have the hyperscalers like Google or big AI companies, which everyone wants a piece of. But it has a lot of underlying technology in terms of manufacturing industrial technology, pharmaceuticals, deep tech in the sense of the research base in the large European universities. So it’s a little bit more difficult to kind of get out of European companies, but it does exist and that’s very valuable for developing economies in South and Southeast Asia. And then I think there’s a bunch of other stuff which is newer, as I say, defense and security partnerships, not just at the level of the larger nation states, but also at the Brussels level as you saw with the defense and security pact that was done between the European Union and India.

Supply chains and economic security is a big concern of Europe. And so I mean that’s an agenda that’s being more fleshed out with respect to India where both sides have big concerns about China. It’s maybe less advanced with Southeast Asia where countries in Southeast Asia view China as a more kind of balanced proposition as opposed to more of a competitor, which I think is true in both Europe and India. And maybe the sort of green tech transition would be another. So I think there’s a lot of areas of kind of common interest. And the point I would go back to making is that particularly on kind of defense and security in the sense of hard security, but also economic security, the potential partnerships in areas like critical raw materials or supply chains are reasonably new. I mean, it wasn’t something that we were talking about pre-COVID and in a sense, the way that China has changed over recent years and to some degree the way the US has now changed. And so I think Europe has things to offer on all of those. It’s not the perfect partner, but then nobody is, you know? So in a sense out there in the world of trying to find people with whom you can diversify, you have to take the countries as they are. And that, as I say, it’s a reasonably small series of buckets of sort of East Asian democracies, Middle Eastern sort of oil emirates, and Europeans are kind of your big plays if you’re sitting in South or Southeast Asia, I think.

WHAT TO WATCH INTO 2027: PRIORITIES AND AREAS OF COOPERATION

ASEAN Wonk: If we look at some of the future-looking agenda items for Europe and Southeast Asia, there’s an EU upgrade planned already by 2027. And so some of the areas you mentioned in terms of the green economy, the digital economy and supply chains are conversations that are already occurring. One of the striking things is around this concept of economic security, which as both you and I know there are debates around but where we are seeing quite a few developments, including the EU’s own economic security strategy released last December. What are the areas you’re looking at particularly as we head into the rest of this year and into 2027 in particular?

James Crabtree: So the…

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Our guest today is Matthew Goodman, who previously worked on preparations for G-20, APEC and the East Asia Summit at the National Security Council and held various roles in government, think tanks, as well as the private sector. We’ll start our conversation talking about a number of geoeconomic developments, including US tariff deals and the regional economic agenda. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of forthcoming developments as well into 2026, including on China’s hosting of APEC in 2026 and the U.S. hosting of G-20.

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2026 TRADE DEAL FUTURES AND INDO-PACIFIC IMPLICATIONS

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the podcast, Matt, and let’s start with the elephant in the room which is U.S. tariff policy and the deals we’ve seen. We’ve seen some of the details publicized in terms of frameworks or statements for countries like Malaysia and Cambodia, but we also have ongoing Supreme Court decisions and proceedings that are coming out within the US as well. And the administration I understand has lined up a Plan B of sorts with various section authorities depending on where this goes. What do you think are the various scenarios that policymakers and observers should be thinking about headed into 2026?

Matt Goodman: Thanks Prashanth. It’s great to be here and happy to talk about these rapidly moving issues. So the first caveat I’m going to say is that it’s really hard to analyze this stuff, let alone predict it. Because that’s sort of a hallmark of the Trump approach, especially in his second term of being kind of maybe deliberately unpredictable and uncertain in his approach. And we’ll talk about this probably some more without a really coherent strategy. So this is really a question of pattern recognition as opposed to real policy analysis. I think that’s what you have to bring to these kinds of kinds of conversations.

And I would say that we now know that President Trump 2.0 is obsessed and focused singularly on issues around trade and tariffs. He’s been doing a frantic set of actions to put tariffs on here or tariffs on there on sectors, on countries, and using that to some extent as leverage to negotiate all these deals. And these deals have some interesting components, which we can talk about. But I think one of the things you touched on is, there’s a lot of uncertainty around them and how real they are and how much they’re actually going be implemented the way they’re written – to the extent they are written because some of them are not written down. And so this is just a pattern of behavior and action that is fast moving, uncertain, and really different from some of the more predictable things we’ve seen in the past in Washington, including Trump 1.0 where it was a little more predictable.

ECONOMIC STATECRAFT & EVOLVING INDO-PACIFIC STAKES

ASEAN Wonk: Right. And just to follow-up quickly on that in terms of how this fits into the broader notion of U. S. economic statecraft. In some of these agreements, we’re seeing things like purchases of certain U. S. goods, products and services, whether it’s LNG or aircraft. But there are other provisions that are more strategic about digital taxes and policies against U. S. companies, and provisions about the implications if countries negotiate agreements with others. One regional official I spoke to jokingly characterized this as unfriendly shoring, relative to friendshoring, allied shoring and nearshoring that we heard about from previous administrations. I guess the broader question from all of this is how this factors into broader U.S. policy beyond just President Trump, given that there’s work and thinking going into these agreements from the people and bureaucracies around him.

Matt Goodman: Yeah. A really good set of questions. First of all, one point I often make is that there’s Donald Trump and then there’s the Trump administration. I mean, those are really, in a way, two different things. There is always the president’s view which has been important in administrations. But in this case, he’s got a unique perspective and unique set of interests and priorities. He has unusual power over his own administration and broadly over Washington. And so when you look at what he’s interested in and doing, you have to somewhat maybe distinguish that from what the Trump administration is doing. And, I think, in descending order, what Donald Trump cares about is the big announcement, the ability to sort of say I’ve done some big deal that I’m sort of a big deal maker, and I’ve made some announcement that I can tweet or post at 2am with capital letters. That’s kind of what you start with. I think to the extent he’s really concerned about policy, he clearly doesn’t like trade imbalances and wants to try to use his superpower of tariffs to bring those down. And then there is this sort of reindustrialization and reshoring and trying to rebuild a kind of manufacturing capability here in the United States that for a variety of reasons has decreased or diminished over his lifetime. And he wants to go back to an era where we were producing more stuff. And so that’s a real significant policy point.

What’s not on my list there is some of the things that have now appeared, and this is where I am interested in the differences between Trump himself and his administration. Like in the US-Malaysia trade deal, there’s some new interesting provisions there. Ones that I am particularly interested in are the ones that sort of touch on economic security as it were, where Malaysia has ostensibly agreed to align some of its policies – maybe tariff policies, export policies, other policies with the US. And as you alluded to, to make commitments, frankly, not to do things with China that upset the US or hurt the US – it explicitly says that somehow jeopardize essential US interests, whatever that exactly means. All of that is interesting and new in trade agreements. Generally, it’s a sign that more of those kinds of issues of trying to get alignment on dealing with China is going to be a part of US policy going forward. I mean, it’s been a part of successive administrations on some level, but I think that’s an interesting thing to watch.

“All of that is interesting and new in trade agreements. Generally, it’s a sign that more of those kinds of issues of trying to get alignment on dealing with China is going to be a part of US policy going forward.”

And then it gets to the question that the point that I made at the beginning of this long response is that Donald Trump doesn’t seem so interested in those issues. I mean, he’s interested in doing more commercial deals and getting the big announcement, maybe in pulling in some investment here to the US. But he doesn’t seem as interested in his economic security issues. So it raises in my mind: is this his team? Has he enabled them to move forward with some of this stuff? Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, negotiated that deal, and he may be more concerned about these sorts of economic security and China related issues. And they probably have some sort of blanket blessing from Trump to go ahead with these kinds of provisions. Not that he cared about the detail, but because he’s in a kind of a push me, pull you sort of situation with China and Xi Jinping. And he wants to show that we’re being tough. And when China’s threatening us on rare earths, that we can do other things to get at them. So at least for now, Trump is endorsing the idea of moving forward with some of these efforts to align allies and partners like Malaysia, which, by the way, the US has had not easy relations with over many years on many issues. So it’s interesting that Malaysia went so far to respond on some of these issues. But I think it’s an interesting question to watch as to whether this is a very different sort of approach from the administration broadly and from what Trump himself is actually really concerned about and prioritize, which gets to: post-Trump, will some of this stuff continue or not? And I think it will is the bottom line. Not every detail, but a lot of this impulse is going to continue post-Trump.

EVOLVING REGIONAL ECONOMIC AGENDA AND APEC

ASEAN Wonk: Right. I wanted to turn to some of the outcomes we saw out of APEC from South Korea’s host year. We saw an adoption of a declaration, which doesn’t always happen, so we should acknowledge that. We also saw some outcomes in areas like demographics and artificial intelligence, which are important if you’re looking at geoeconomics in a region like Asia long term, where some of the countries, including in Southeast Asia like Thailand, have actually already begun to age. As somebody who has thought about APEC as a practitioner and then as a scholar as well, how would you assess the outcomes from this round of APEC, whether it’s a grade or a scale of one to ten, however you want to assess it?

Matt Goodman: Great. Well, first of all, let me just say that it’s wonderful to be in a conversation where you don’t actually have to spell out what APEC stands for. Here in Washington are probably five people who know what those initials A-P-E-C stand for. I’m one of them because I think APEC is important. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I think it is an important part of the landscape in the region; an important tool of US policy in the region if we use it right. So I actually pay more attention to APEC than most people do. I would say the outcome in Korea was not bad. I mean, considering that you had to go into this with pretty low expectations. I’m sure the Koreans did in some way as hosts. They were probably trying to avoid any major disruption. And if they got that, which they did, then they’d consider that a victory. You’re right. They got to a communique, which is not something that always happens at these events, and that’s significant. It’s less than three pages, which is a real accomplishment in itself.

And it does have some useful issues that set agendas. I always think these forums – the G-20, APEC, all of these big and multilateral forums – really serve broadly three purposes. They solve problems and really try to move an agenda forward on specific solutions – in the extreme, in a crisis like the G-20 was formed in. So it’s a problem-solving body. Secondly, even if it doesn’t solve problems immediately, it’s an agenda setting opportunity. So you alluded to aging, and that’s a good example. Korea has the worst demographic posture of any country in Asia or the world maybe with such a low fertility rate and an aging society, but every country is facing this on some level. Korea really put that front and center on the agenda. That’s important by itself.

People can be cynical about that because they say there weren’t any tangible agreements to do anything or to make more babies or whatever it is that you’re expecting to be done. But putting it on the agenda and then forcing conversations among bureaucracies within bureaucracies about how do we actually put some meat on the bones of these sorts of leader level objectives I think is important. So I give the Koreans credit for that. And then there’s the building habits of cooperation point in these forums where you get leaders together. Now, admittedly, President Trump didn’t stick around for the actual APEC meeting, but it was an excuse for him to get out there and have a bunch of important bilateral meetings, which broadly, I think, went pretty well, all things considered.

“So you alluded to aging, and that’s a good example. Korea has the worst demographic posture of any country in Asia or the world maybe with such a low fertility rate and an aging society, but every country’s facing this on some level. Korea really put that front and center on the agenda. That that’s important by itself.”

And so people often understate this purpose of these forums. But remember, leaders are kind of lonely people. They don’t have a lot of peers. They spend all day with a bunch of supplicants and people who want things from them or staffers, but they don’t really talk to their peers a whole lot. So these are real opportunities for them to get together, compare notes, tell each other what’s really important to them. And so I think the Korea APEC sessions helped to do that, and so I give the Koreans credit for that as well. And I think it’s a good thing that APEC made it through this year, and then we’ll see how it continues next year under Chinese leadership. And it’s always a little bit of a fragile undertaking: you’re never quite sure if it’s going to make it to the next level or next year. But I think it was a pretty good outcome for APEC in Korea.

MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS: EXPECTATIONS AND REALITY

ASEAN Wonk: Just to broaden it out a little bit, I’m also wondering – to your point about multilateralism in general and multilateral institutions – to what extent should we be recalibrating our expectations for what their role is in this environment of increasing geopolitical competition? Because the challenges you noted with APEC and other institutions like the G-20 are profound and even getting some of these outcome documents almost taken for granted a few years ago may actually be more prized now in this environment.

Matt Goodman: Yeah. Multilateralism is not fashionable certainly here in Washington these days. And more than that, Donald Trump and his administration are pretty hostile to even the term or the concept multilateralism. They want the US to be able to make its own decisions, not have to sit down and compromise and spend time talking to a bunch of other countries and kind of find the lowest common denominator. So there’s a pretty antagonistic view of multilateralism here in Washington. And other countries as well, I think, have found that it hasn’t delivered in the way that it was originally envisaged. I mean, take the World Trade Organization, which has not really been able to perform on any of its core functions of negotiating new trade liberalization or enforcing deals or even surveillance, which is the weakest of its functions. And a lot of countries recognize that. And that’s not all the US’ fault. In fact, we’re part of the problem, but we’re not the only ones that have made WTO less functional than it was envisaged originally.

I do think the G-20 has really suffered from not having real consensus – the kind of consensus that was there in 2008-2009 in the middle of a crisis when the US, China, others came together and did some pretty dramatic things to stabilize the global economy and the global financial system. All of that’s gone, and now there’s competition within the group. But the challenges remain. The global economy is still fragile. The financial system could be in trouble. It has many problems. We have climate change. We have pandemics. We have many other transnational challenges that require some kind of international conversation. And I think that’s what keeps people coming to the table, including the United States. I mean, it’s interesting that the Trump administration in fact – I am not sure why this is the case – has not withdrawn from the WTO or tried to kill it. We didn’t in the first term, and this is now the fifth year that Trump has had the opportunity to walk away from the WTO, and he hasn’t. And I’m interested in why. Apparently, we paid our dues, which I didn’t even hear about until just recently quietly. And so we’re still interested in the WTO as useful in some way to do something.

“I do think the G-20 has really suffered from not having real consensus – the kind of consensus that was there in 2008-2009 in the middle of a crisis when the US, China, others came together and did some pretty dramatic things to stabilize the global economy and the global financial system. All of that’s gone, and now there’s competition within the group.”

And the IMF and the World Bank similarly. Treasury Secretary Bessent has talked about them as useful institutions – maybe misguided or overbloated or whatever. He wants to reform them, but he hasn’t walked away from it. So in practice, I think even in Washington, let alone in other capitals, there’s still this impulse just because of the reality of the way the world works. There are problems and challenges that no one country suffers alone and no one country can solve alone. And so, you kind of have to get together in some way even if you don’t like the term multilateralism or you don’t like some of the commitments that you’re obliged to follow through on under the WTO or whatever. So I think it’s an interesting question of where all of this goes, and that’s a long conversation we can have if you’re interested. But I do think there’s sort of crosscurrents here over some of these multilateral forums. They’re definitely troubled and have a hard time making the case for their relevance and getting people to the table, but there’s still an impulse to because of the reality of global challenges to come to the table. So that’s an opportunity.

LOOKING AHEAD TO CHINA APEC 2026 AND COMPETITION FUTURES

ASEAN Wonk: Great. And looking ahead, one of the data points that people are already starting to look ahead to is that China is going to be the host country for APEC next year. That’s going to be followed by Vietnam the following year. Xi Jinping’s speech at APEC included all kinds of references to what has become quite customary for Chinese officials to refer to, like avoiding the law of the jungle and so on and so forth after the second Trump administration to almost a oneupmanship relative to the United States and trying to position themselves as the bastion of free trade even though China has its own challenges as well on that front. But it feeds into some of the anxieties about how China might utilize APEC during its host year. To what extent is this going to be about some of what you mentioned – agenda setting, broader challenges – and to what extent is this going to be more about a bilateralized notion of U.S.-China competition and APEC being a battleground for that?

Matt Goodman: Well…

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Our guest today is Datuk Siobhan Das, who is the CEO of the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM Malaysia) based in Malaysia. We’ll start our conversation talking through some recent developments, including the wider implications of the new U.S.-Malaysia agreement on reciprocal trade and the Malaysia ASEAN chairmanship. Stay tuned as we go through a number of other forthcoming developments, including geoeconomic challenges posed by US-China competition and prospects for Southeast Asia’s economic story.

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Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

NEW TRUMP DEALS IN PERSPECTIVE

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast Siobhan, and let’s start with the elephant in the room which is the US-Malaysia trade deal. We’ve heard pockets of domestic criticism on sovereignty and so on. My understanding talking to officials is that they went into this with eyes wide open, and they had to weigh these considerations against the fact that this was a U.S. administration that was taking a pretty tough line on these issues. There was also a preference for Malaysia being a first mover relatively speaking, leveraging the ASEAN Summit and the fact that President Trump was going to be in Malaysia. And also getting past this notion that Malaysia was being left behind in some of the big strategic decisions in US policy and being a trusted partner in some of these key sectors. I’m interested to hear your thoughts. And also, more broadly, what does this mean for companies? There’s a lot of talk about challenges, but what does it mean in terms of the opportunities for companies that are looking at this U.S.-Malaysia relationship more broadly?

Datuk Siobhan Das: Thank you very much for having me on and for asking AMCHAM to come and talk on this, Prashanth. Great to see you again as well. You know, this is a really interesting time, and you’re right on all the things that you said there. It was a very interesting negotiation. It’s not your typical FTA. It came to being because of the tariffs that the Trump administration was putting on across the globe. It’s not just Malaysia. It’s right across the globe, and everybody is impacted. And I think everybody was trying to figure out what is it that we needed to do to be able to still engage with the United States. The United States is the world’s largest consumer market. It is one of the trading partners for a number of different countries and an important trading partner.

And Malaysia is no different. Significant trading partner for Malaysia. I think it’s the number two trading partner, and the US is the number one investor in Malaysia. So this was a critical agreement to be able to come to. And there’s a lot of US businesses that have landed in Malaysia over the last fifty years. We represent a host of those, and we’ve seen that grow over the last fifty years. A very significant number of them are in the semiconductor field. So it was very important for Malaysia to understand what that market was to its economy. And I think you’re absolutely right. I think Malaysia did take a very pragmatic and very practical look at what they needed to do to maintain that market. This is not to the exclusion of any other market, but it’s with the significance that the American market has to its actual driver of its own economy. it had to really think about it and say: okay – what is it that we need to do to preserve the drivers of our economy? The goals that we’ve already set through in the NIMP – the New Industrial Master Plan – and how do we achieve those goals? If we don’t make this deal, you know, how does that set back our own growth? How does it set back what we want to achieve as a country in terms of moving up the value chain, in terms of quality jobs for our people? So I think the country needed to look at how does this agreement shape what our future is.

“If we don’t make this deal, you know, how does that set back our own growth? How does it set back what we want to achieve as a country in terms of moving up the value chain, in terms of quality jobs for our people? So I think the country needed to look at how does this agreement shape what our future is.”

But, again, this is not to the exclusion of any other country, because I think Malaysia rightfully so has to diversify its markets. It’s matured enough over the years to be a leader and an innovative leader in the region, and it is going out slowly into different markets. And I think that’s great to see, and we’re all excited that a lot of the investments that are coming into Malaysia are actually using Malaysia as a base to leapfrog or enter different markets that Malaysia provides. I think Malaysia has nine FTAs, and that provides a very attractive base for a lot of U.S. companies to come to Malaysia. So I think the opportunity to get this right was really powering behind what the negotiators were looking for to try and find a deal that could balance what they need to move forward with. So I think the approach by MITI (Ministry of Investment and Trade) was correct to look at that balance.

NEW UPGRADE AND INTRAREGIONAL COMPETITION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

ASEAN Wonk: One of the other aspects that I think was a little missed amid the focus on the trade aspect was the fact that we also technically had an elevation of the US Malaysia relationship to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership. That’s the first upgrade that we’ve seen for a Southeast Asian country under the second Trump administration. Skeptics thought the relationship was not doing well in terms of the optics particularly if you look at the start of the Gaza war. So the fact that Malaysia has been able to get to an upgrade is a bit of a missed point. I think you’ve talked about this publicly that the intraregional competition in Southeast Asia for investments has actually been increasing over the past few years, and for Malaysia to get on the map and stay on the map in terms of the United States and the investment landscape, it also needs to do a bit more. Do you think that this upgrade also does help Malaysia position itself a little bit more on the map?

Datuk Siobhan Das: I think there’s a lot that’s happened in the last few months that has raised Malaysia’s profile. I think also there’s been a lot of understatement about the role that Malaysia has played. I think we just haven’t given it the recognition that it actually exists. I think this is where the strength is. There is a there there: I think that the both sides were at pains to really understand what was valuable in the relationship. And I think when they actually studied what was there, they came to the conclusion that, yes, there’s still work to be done, but, fundamentally, there is a level of trust and compliance that can be worked on and upgraded. And I think that’s where the relationship is pointing towards. Malaysia has the potential and is already a trusted partner. It’s got the rules and regulations and it has proven ability to play to global rules, to play to the needs of a monitored environment. It has all the foundations there, and it’s playing within those rules.

So I think it’s really establishing the trust and we’re making it more visible that there is that relationship. Whether it is – and this is not an area that we get into – but the security relationship between the US Malaysia is quite strong, but the commercial relationship and the strength of that commercial relationship with the commercial law that’s in place, the strength of the IP laws. Yes. Like I said, I’m not going to say that it’s perfect, but there’s work to be done. We can improve the transparency. We can improve our traceability. And I think that’s what the relationships and the acts and agreements that have come to place will support. And I think that’s what people are excited about in the sense that: okay, we have now clarity. Businesses now know, okay: we’re at nineteen percent on certain things, but they’re in various sectors that are important to the relationship. Those sectors have been given a different level of tariffs that can keep it competitive for U.S. business. Because a lot of that Malaysian business that does go back to the United States is important to the U.S. value chain. A lot of the businesses that are based here also supply the rest of the world. So, you know, that one is less of a concern. But nonetheless, once you’re complying to the United States’ needs, you’re going to be compliant to a lot of the international standards as well.

But this is nothing new. Malaysia’s already been doing this. It’s already compliant. It’s already shown its ability to be in that global value chain. And it’s not been looked at and regarded as an emerging market or a third world market. The US businesses that are here use and look at operations that are based here as first world. And once they’re qualified, once a Malaysian organization or a company is qualified to work with a US company, you’re qualified globally. So this is the strength of what Malaysian companies can actually do. And I think this is really important because what the agreements do is elevate Malaysian companies to be able to get plugged into the US ecosystem. And by doing that, they become globally recognized as well. So they become much more competitive, not just in the region, not just to the United States, but also globally. And I think that’s where the true value is for not just US companies, but anybody plugged into that ecosystem. And therefore, it gives the opportunity for a Malaysian company to decide whether or not the United States is a marketplace it wants to go to. And if it’s excited about it, then there’s a pathway. This is what you need to do. If it doesn’t want to play in that marketplace, then that’s a choice it has to have. But without these agreements, Malaysia may or may not have had that choice. So I think this is really an opportunity for Malaysian companies to make some really interesting decisions about how they want to innovate, how they want to grow.

GEOCONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF ASEAN SECTORAL AGREEMENTS AND MALAYSIA’S ASEAN CHAIRMANSHIP YEAR

ASEAN Wonk: Just zooming out a little bit, Malaysia also just chaired ASEAN this year. And there’s a whole host of geoeconomic areas there that I know businesses are looking at more generally with respect to the region and globally. Artificial intelligence. The Digital Economy Framework Agreement pushed it out to next year. The ASEAN Power Grid. What are some of the sectors that you see as areas of greatest opportunities for business, not just regionally, but also, places where Malaysia can contribute as a country that has played a really important role in some of these areas like semiconductors? And during the pandemic actually is when perhaps US consumers actually became more aware of that role that Malaysia plays in the semiconductor supply chain.

Datuk Siobhan Das: Absolutely. The semiconductor trade is absolutely vital, and I think this is something that Malaysia can play and does play a really important role with the number of exports. I think the number is that ten percent or eleven percent of all electronics passes through Malaysia in some way, shape, or form. And so it was very important for Malaysia to retain this position. And not just as an assembly test because it is moving up the value chain, and we’re getting innovation here. There is design happening here. So it just gives us security in the fact that there is a marketplace. And so SMEs and even companies wanting to come here can dedicate that investment to be able to reach that marketplace. So I think semiconductors is going play a vital role going forward.

“I think the number is that ten percent or eleven percent of all electronics passes through Malaysia in some way, shape, or form. And so it was very important for Malaysia to retain this position.”

But flowing on from that, these are other sectors that are going to grow. We’re already seeing growth and commitment by medical devices, medical technology that are building up on top of this semiconductor base that has been matured over fifty years. So you’re seeing that come. And when medical devices come, there’s so many rules and regulations and permits that they have to get here. Once it’s in Malaysia, you’re unlikely to see them leave very quickly because it’s hard to get in and want to see it. And if Malaysia can be the fifth global hub for medical devices, this would be a really important thing for Malaysia, not just for the US trade, but also regionally. And I think that’s a really important sector we need to be looking at in medical technology and medical devices. But also in addition, aerospace. And I think aerospace, there is a huge opportunity here, not just in parts, but also in development in different areas. So, of course, the MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) development here is very important to have.

But also, you’ve got companies that are actually innovating and finding homes in the ecosystem in Malaysia, which also can then tap into the ASEAN framework that is there so we can make sure that the inputs are coming from ASEAN, that we can build the hub that ASEAN that can provide. And I think that’s what’s exciting about what happened at ASEAN. This work on interoperability, this work on regionalization, and how do we use the interconnectivity within ASEAN with Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore. How do we all work together? And I think that’s what’s really important. I’m really glad that in Malaysia’s chairmanship, they really pushed a lot of the interoperability and the regionality. And I think that’s what’s going to really drive not just Malaysia, but the whole ASEAN coming together and providing opportunities for the rest of the lesser developed ASEAN countries to come into the framework.

And then with the digital agreement, as you said, we’ve got a little bit more ways to go. But there’s a lot of commitment towards that. And I think that’s something we’re making great progress on, and once we can get better data flows, making sure that we have a trusted network across the region, this is all going to play and make sure that ASEAN grows harmoniously and together. So, yes, it’s going to be, you know, you’ve got Singapore and Timor Leste at the extremes, but everybody else in between can actually start to say, well, you know, how do I plug in and look towards that plug in? And I think that’s what’s really important is how do we build together. And, of course, you’re going to have interregional competition. Everybody’s going to want to have a little to get ahead of each other, and there’s nothing wrong with that you know? Competition always is a driver of innovation. We’re looking forward to it. And I think Malaysia should try to strive and move forward, but also how do we look at areas and how do we plug into each other as well.

CHALLENGES TO REALIZING NEW GEOECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES

ASEAN Wonk: In some of these conversations – on supply chains, for example – it’s often forgotten that governments can shape some of these conversations on supply chain movements and such, but, ultimately, it’s going to be the businesses that actually have to do the moving. To that point, you talked about some of the opportunities and the sectors there. But from a business perspective, what are some of the top challenges that you see to some of these opportunities in Malaysia as well as regionally and globally that businesses are facing that might be a little bit underappreciated from those that look primarily at geopolitics or at governments?

Datuk Siobhan Das: Well, if you take geopolitics and government aside and you start looking at what’s really driving business growth, cost is always going to be king. But it’s not always the main reason why people choose a location. If you look at the risk map, they outweigh a lot of the different aspects. So access to energy. Access to energy is absolutely critical right now. So if and when the ASEAN Power Grid can come into being, this is going to give ASEAN a much, much better focus on the what it can deliver. So power, access to power, access to renewable energy. So these are really, really important things. Your customer is going to be looking for renewables. How are you going to deliver that? That doesn’t mean that you’re not going be using traditional forms. It’s how do you plug in renewables?

You’re also going to be looking at supply chains in this world right now. Where’s the tariff? What are the limitations of the tariff? I don’t think anybody’s leaving countries, but which lines of my product are going to be best suited to be closer to customer? And closer to customer doesn’t necessarily mean close to the United States. It could mean my customer is in Asia, so therefore, I need to be in Asia. So these are all decisions that businesses need to make. Also, inputs. Cost of transporting inputs is going up, you know? You cannot just rely on ships or air traffic sending you those inputs. So if you can develop your local ecosystem, then your costs are going to be managed. So can you develop local inputs? And I think this is where ASEAN has a real opportunity to develop its ability and its SMEs can get into developing key inputs and being able to have a regional supply chain. And I think this is something that’s a promise.

Malaysia has increasingly got a fantastic robust ecosystem that is increasingly being able to provide inputs to the US supply chain and the Western supply chain, and it should be encouraged to do more. And I think the Malaysian government is encouraging its SMEs and its Malaysian businesses to look at how do we plug in to innovate so that it could actually supply into those ecosystems and be part of the trading mechanism. So I think this is the Malaysian government saying: how do we support our SMEs? How do we help them gain access to finance? How do we get them access to capacity building and capability growth? And I think with all the regional work that’s been done in ASEAN in individual countries themselves and supporting SMEs and with the ART (Agreement on Reciprocal Trade) as well. Access to finance, access to knowledge of the secure market that is there will give businesses confidence that they can now spend money on training, spend money on investing in new equipment, spend money on innovation and design so that they can be part of that and not just rely on being a minor input, but actually be part of the innovative cycle. Working with regional teams. Being able to develop regional teams working with the Thais, working with the Vietnamese or even the Philippines or in India or anywhere else so you can develop that knowledge.

And I think that’s what’s really interesting. The more businesses can see, okay, this is what’s happening and those supply chain movements, they are going to be kind of like, okay: how do we shorten and strengthen them? But of course, are they going to move? Supply chains move all the time. They move more than you think, but it’s a cost. It costs to move supply chains. And I think one of the things that we need to be very aware of is the role of people and talent mobility, and how do we increase the ability for people to move so that you can actually share that knowledge, to be able to bring that knowledge across the board and vice versa. There are centers of excellence across Asia that the United States, that you know, maybe the Europeans may need. So how do we showcase what innovation’s been done here and how do we spread it across the world and vice versa? So talent mobility is going to be absolutely critical. And I think this is something we would like to see how we can impress on businesses; how do we make that easier.

So there’s lots of challenges. Supply chain is exciting, but we need to be able to keep an eye on what really is core to us and core to the businesses. And each business is going to have a different business model. There’s no one size fits all. So governments need to be able to be adaptive enough to understand that each company has a different business model. You cannot use one paintbrush and paint the one patina across and say the industry behaves this way. It doesn’t. Everybody has a different business model.

BEYOND TRUMP TRADE DEALS AND CHOICES: US-CHINA GEOECONOMIC COMPETITION AND HOW BUSINESSES ARE NAVIGATING IT

ASEAN Wonk: Right. To the point that you raised earlier as well about the calibration that these countries have to make when they’re sort of managing relationships with different powers. So if you’ve got a relationship with the United States and you’ve got one with China, how do you manage that? One of the things the trade agreement has gotten focus on is some of the provisions for example that focus on if you’re doing x, y, and z with another country, that might affect how the United States is going to treat you in certain areas. I’m wondering if we could zoom out a little bit from the Malaysia case and look at some of the geoeconomic impacts of US-China competition and the pressures that they’re exerting on different governments and how they’re thinking about the choices that they’re making. What are the downstream implications of that for businesses and how they’re thinking about the choices that they’re making, not just today, but five years, ten years, fifteen years down the line?

Datuk Siobhan Das: Okay…

Our guest today is Dr. Vannarith Chheang, who is speaking in his personal capacity and has a variety of affiliations, including as chairman of the advisory council for Cambodia’s National Assembly and Angkor Social Innovation Park. He has nearly two decades of experience serving in various roles including as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank and the UN. We’ll start our conversation talking through contemporary developments, including scam centers and the Thailand-Cambodia border war. Stay tuned as we talk through a range of other subjects, including ASEAN; Cambodia’s strategies as a small state amid U.S.-China competition; and what to expect in foreign policy into 2026.

To receive full ASEAN Wonk posts and support our work, consider a paid subscription for $5 a month/$50 a year through the button below. For more on pricing for institutions, groups and discounted categories, visit this page.

Our guest today is Brigadier General David Stilwell, who served as assistant secretary of state for the bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs under the first Trump administration after a series of other roles as well, including as defense attaché to China and as part of the US Air Force where he started his career back in 1980. We'll start our conversation talking through a number of contemporary developments, including the Trump administration's approach to Southeast Asia and country perspectives on not being forced to choose between China and the United States. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of other subjects, including the future trajectory of US China relations and Washington's approach to flashpoints such as Taiwan and the South China Sea.

To receive full ASEAN Wonk posts and support our work, consider a paid subscription for $5 a month/$50 a year through the button below. For more on pricing for institutions, groups and discounted categories, visit this page.

Note: The transcript that follows the above free clip preview has been lightly edited for clarity and organized into sections for ease of quick browsing. For all ASEAN Wonk Podcast episodes, full video and audio podcasts, along with edited and sectioned transcripts as well as block quotes, will be a premium product for our paying subscribers, but we will include a short free transcript preview and a clip for all readers to maintain accessibility. Paying subscribers can find the rest of the full transcript and the full video podcast right below the paywall. If you have not already, do consider subscribing, and, if you have already done so and like what you see and hear, do consider forwarding this to others as well who may be interested. Thank you for your support as always!

TRUMP II VS TRUMP I POLICY CONTEXTS

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast, General Stilwell. I wanted to start, given your experience serving in the first Trump administration, with where you see continuities and changes in Trump I vs. Trump II. Talking to policymakers in the region, there's a sense that in the second Trump administration we're seeing the obvious headline makers like the hardening of tariff policy, some continuity on issues like scam centers, for example, and there's also a category of maybe a little bit too early to say definitively on where we're heading on issues like China policy as we build up to leader-to-leader interactions there. You travel extensively in the region and we've actually been in a few engagements as well over the past year in Southeast Asia. What's your sense of how things are looking on the Asia policy front in Washington, as well as the regional perceptions and responses to that?

General Stilwell: Well, thanks for having me here. And, hopefully, my perspective adds to the conversation and doesn't detract too much. But the focus has been on great powers, big economies like China, and then from there, Northeast Asia, primarily Japan. We can talk about that later, the over under on that. So Southeast Asia, in general, I think has gotten a pretty good treatment on this. The agreement with Vietnam came across fairly quietly without a lot of drama, which says there's interest in shifting markets and development and production centers away from one main aggressive and adversarial center and shifting it to countries that have lower labor costs and have many other advantages that that the PRC has since lost. So I can't speak to all, but I do know that I was fairly happy with how the agreement with Vietnam came out, and we're going to focus primarily on economic sense.

Unlike Trump I, where the action areas were the Defense Department and the State Department, it really seems like there's been a shift away from that more toward Commerce, Treasury and USTR. No criticism there. If you're looking at national debt now at $37.5 trillion dollars, you’ve got to do something to get that under control. And if you do that by pumping up the economy, moving industry back to the US, all the things that we're hearing about, that's a reasonable approach. I would just say it can't come at the cost of those other traditional security centers like Defense and State.

“Unlike Trump I, where the action areas were the Defense Department and the State Department, it really seems like there's been a shift away from that more toward Commerce, Treasury and USTR.”

PLURALISM AND COMPETITION IN US SOUTHEAST ASIA POLICY

ASEAN Wonk: The other aspect I wanted to zoom in a bit on is what we've been hearing since actually a few years ago publicly from Southeast Asian officials about not being forced to choose between the United States and China. My own sense has long been that this is more about the choices that these countries actually make for themselves and how they make them, rather than anything that's imposed by Washington or other countries. And sometimes, as we both know, choices are being made more for shorter-term regime interests, which are not necessarily the same as longer term national interests. You’ve spent a lot of time thinking through the issue of choices. I recall when you were Assistant Secretary, you tried to emphasize the fact that under the first Trump administration, just because there was a greater focus on sovereignty didn't mean that there wasn't room for pluralism and notions of multipolarity.

At the same time, you fast forward a few years to the present, you know, just a few weeks ago we saw China with its Shanghai Cooperation Organization summitry in Tianjin promote more aggressively its own notion of what a world order should look like, and the Global Governance Initiative was rolled out. How much room do you think there is for this kind of pluralism and coexistence of worldviews as these views are competing increasingly between the United States and China and other capitals are adjusting their own approaches to this as well?

General Stilwell: I actually I love the idea of pluralism. We took some heat over that presentation at Brookings when we gave it in 2019. The mighty David Feith wrote that speech. He wrote it at the last minute because he just had this change of heart. And the folks at Brookings were surprised that we went down that path, but think about it. That was my experience everywhere I went is people were very happy when American diplomats did not show up with a non-pluralistic agenda saying, my way or the highway, you're going to do human rights, you're going to do all these things that we demand of you.

I grew up as a fighter pilot, and we're a fairly direct bunch. We don't use a lot of diplomatic language. And one of the first things you learn is you've got two ears and one mouth, and you should use them in those proportions. Well, I suggest our diplomats consider that because I oftentimes would follow one of my colleagues into a capital, and they had just gotten wire brushed and the finger wagged in their face about doing things that were culturally the norm for them. So, one, we have to stop preaching at folks. We need to listen to what they have to say. If we want to guide them; if we want to see change in how things are going, if there's human rights practice, we gently guide them into that without trying to force them. And so it starts off with diplomacy. And we should be teaching these things as we raise our diplomats. On that point, though, the Chinese version of this stuff is unipolar. It's unilateral. It's my way or the highway. You will do these things. And then they go after these countries at the SCO summit. I mean, it's rogue’s gallery. It's countries that really have no accountability with their own populations.

And my first experience with this was at that Shangri-La Dialogue in 2014. I went with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Marty Dempsey, and Chuck Hagel, a Republican congressman who the Obama administration brought in as secretary of defense. What a great choice. The Japanese made a very strong press for watching out what the PRC is doing with debt traps and all that stuff. It was the first time that there was actually a really strong contentious back and forth between the PRC and, in this case, the US. All the others were hanging back behind the US going: okay, you guys take this one, but we don't want to get splashed. Don't make us choose between the two of you. That's why this headline really got my attention: we want a strong economic relationship with the PRC, but we want the US to provide our security. Now think about the math on that. When you're doing trade – economic interactions and those things – it should be a win-win. Everybody's condition increases. Security is not that way. Security is a bill. It's costly. We're going to spend $850 billion this year on the Defense Department, and that's not even enough. So I've been wrestling with that since 2014. I hadn't come up with a good four syllable response to “don't make us choose.” A very good friend and a former colleague and a former boss came back with “Lee Kuan Yew chose.” I like that one, but maybe a little more something a little less.

“I hadn't come up with a good four syllable response to “don't make us choose.” A very good friend and a former colleague and a former boss came back with “Lee Kuan Yew chose.” I like that one, but maybe a little more something a little less.”

Look at Pakistan. Pakistan went all in with the PRC with this China Pakistan Economic Corridor, and now they're regretting it. And they want to get out of this bad deal. Well, if I was in charge, I would say, I'm not going to make you choose. You decide which way you want to go, but it's a one-way door. Because if you're going to trade on American interests and American taxpayer dollars and use that to sweeten the deal with the PRC, well, don't come running back to us when that deal goes south as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is. And the last thing on that, we want to talk about finance, it's obscene that Islamabad has gotten so badly in debt. Provides them no benefit. This thing is about moving energy from Gwadar into Kashgar in western China, and the Pakistani government gains very little or anything from that. But yet they're stuck with the bill. And in order to keep them from defaulting, they're going to the IMF. The IMF has taken American large part contributions, and they're not going to Islamabad. Where's that money going? It's going to Beijing. So they're actually validating this debt trap diplomacy, and we're a part of it. I don't want to be involved in that in any way. Pakistan, you made your deal with the devil. You're going to go live with it. You figure out how to get out of this default. That would be a good choice. Default. And then from there, we can work with you. But don't take good money from World Bank and IMF and send it up to Beijing for your bad decision.

REFRAMING CHOICES AND TRADEOFFS

ASEAN Wonk: Just to quickly follow up on that, in terms of the choices that these countries make or want to make, is there a sense in your view that there are certain areas where those choices are more important. Telecommunications is a very different space from retail. Where you choose to get your submarines from, for example, that's a very different capability from buying rifles, because one is much stickier and there are big concerns about interoperability, the other one not as much. So I'm wondering, in your experience, is there a way to think about these choices in ways that are much more granular in terms of what these countries are facing?

General Stilwell: In an ideal world, we would all go back and read about the Cold War and note that early on, we did try our best to make a deal with the Soviet devil. And, eventually, what was the answer to that? It was called containment. And so we had the Soviet bloc, and you had the free world. And look. As much as we hate to go back to this, as much as people don't want to think about Cold War and nuclear annihilation and worse – we just went through a pandemic – this is clearly part of the calculus. It's an ugly truth that we're all going to have to sit down and eventually come up with a plan to decouple and get out of this mess.

Now you have a great question about, you know, you buy submarines or you buy submarine cables. Is one better than the other? Let me offer a contrast. We intervened in several submarine cable purchases or contracts with Huawei before they made a decision using a number of instruments. One called the Transaction Assistance Fund, which doesn't get as much play as it should. It was a ten-million-dollar budget point, and it used the thing that America has the most of our surplus: we're burgeoning in one thing, and that's lawyers. And so we took this surplus of lawyers with One Belt, One Road. Well, how about we ship it overseas and help Burma make a decision on whether this Kyaukpyu Port is legal, if it's sustainable, all those things. And we helped them negotiate down a big bill for this port and energy facility down to something that was a lot more reasonable. So if we can turn them into something that looks more like a reasonable nondebt trap arrangement, well, send our lawyers there. I think it is still active. I think we should use it a lot more.

But submarine cables and other things, these strategic concepts are in a world where it's not about nuclear or kinetic warfare: we are in the world of economic information warfare. I plan to talk a lot about that here. And outsourcing your submarine cable development to Huawei and others might not be your best choice. On the other hand, the prospect of a Vietnamese Kilo submarine engaging with a Chinese gray hull combatant – possibly winning that exchange – I love that idea. Vietnam has its own sovereignty issues. It has its own long geographical frictions with the PRC – nine dash line, eleven dash line – and it has come to a head. In 1988, there's a video of PLA Navy folks machine gunning much of Vietnamese sailors standing knee deep in water in parasails.

So definitely there's a lot of friction there. If they happen to use Russian stuff, which is pretty good to defend themselves, I love the idea of Beijing staring at Moscow and going: did you really have to sell these guys your subs? India's bought that stuff and others. So let's use a little bit of judo here. Remember, judo is using your adversary's effort and energy against them. We're no longer a Nebraska lineman. We're not three hundred pounds, and we can't put the adversary on their butt anymore. We can't just bulldoze people. We're going to have to use our heads and use concepts like judo where we see the PRC digging a hole, making a mistake. As Napoleon said, never interrupt your adversary in the middle of a mistake. And then maybe even amplify that mistake for them. Let's be a little bit more nuanced in our thinking.

“[T]he prospect of a Vietnamese Kilo submarine engaging with a Chinese gray hull combatant – possibly winning that exchange – I love that idea… If they happen to use Russian stuff, which is pretty good to defend themselves, I love the idea of Beijing staring at Moscow and going: did you really have to sell these guys your subs?”

GEOECONOMIC ENGAGEMENT

ASEAN Wonk: The example of the Kyaukpyu port in Myanmar is interesting because the bright and shiny new infrastructure projects get the headlines but there are things behind which don’t like technical assistance and capacity-building – the soft components of infrastructure rather than hard components. As you said, that was important for Myanmar at that time to be able to make sure that they weren't making a decision that they would later end up regretting. One other aspect that goes missed is U.S. private sector investment. Interested in your views on that given your past experience with both the defense space and the State Department given the focus now on other economic components such as foreign aid and infrastructure.

General Stilwell: A giant topic. Let me start off with how this comes to be. Rudimentary, not fully developed governance; countries with governments that are still more on the authoritarian side – it's really hard to hold your leaders to account. So your hard and soft infrastructure: they make decisions not based on overall betterment of their own people and national interest; they make them based on elite capture and money. I mean, you look at Solomon Islands, Sogavare and the rest of that stuff. And you see it in Southeast Asia as well.

Key to that is transparency. So one thing we can do: we got a lot of reporters – we can help them expose and show and hold accountable their leaders. Not to the point, like – unfortunately, USAID had gotten a reputation for doing as far as funding revolutionary groups because they weren't pro-LGBT or, you know, supporting x or take your pick. Instead of focusing on the basis of what aid was – putting food on the table and helping people thrive – aid did drift into more sensitive subjects: back to pluralism. We have to accept that these countries are moving at their own pace, and they won't go faster just because we're pumping money in there. And, again, the governments look at aid money and many times don't want it because it brings with it all these strings. So it's unfortunate there are some programs that were beneficial that are going to suffer. I think in two or three years when we then take stock and look at the ones that were doing good things – PEPFAR and others, vaccines, food – we can sift the wheat from the chaff on that.

So other things worth talking about are those deals made in places like Naypyidaw and that Myitsone dam deal. Now I don't know how Beijing got the initial approvals going or started building that dam, but when the government of Myanmar saw what this thing was turning into, they rightfully shut it down. And good on them for having the courage of doing that. To paraphrase from Star Wars. “It's not the deal I signed up for.” And from Beijing: “I'm changing the deal. Pray I don't change it more.”

So infrastructure in itself is an unvarnished good. It is helping people move things and people around. That's a good thing. But when it comes to these extra strings or the quality without transparency, it's shoddy. And now we've got governments holding the bill for stuff that's not helping them. I mean, there was a runway built on Timor Leste that within maybe a year began to crack and crumble. It is of zero use, and yet they are going to have to pay for that. So as far as private sector goes, let's look at the bad examples. Let's talk about Goldman Sachs and the 1MDB deal in Malaysia. You know, Goldman Sachs was every bit a part of that. So we've got to police our own. Make sure that these deals aren't looking more like a Chinese deal, and looking more like what you'd expect coming out of the US.

But in my travels, a couple things came to light. I got to all but two of the ASEAN countries. I spent more than half of my time in ASEAN. And to me, it is the fulcrum. It is the point that we need to focus on in the Indo-Pacific that is going to be, one, be highest bank of buck and get the most out of investment in this relationship, and also needs our attention because of the disparate nature of the ten member states. Things we can do to maybe help them help themselves. I'll talk about those in a bit. So we saw 1MDB – that was just bad. But then you look at HP when I was in Singapore: HP trains native managers, local managers, unlike the PRC, which you're seeing in Pakistan right now. They bring in all their own labor. Booze swilling, pork-eating atheist Chinese in a Islamic country? It doesn't go well. That's why Islamabad fronted fifteen thousand troops to kill Pakistanis in Balochistan who are not happy with the Chinese operating in there. So, strange bedfellows with these Chinese deals. Again, it's not our job to fix it. What we do, what American companies do, is they want better insurance. They want to improve a lot, not because of some altruistic need: they want to do it because you train these people, they'll actually do much better job for you. This is a basic American concept. Vietnam – Starbucks offers its employees a free four-year college degree. Online, virtual, fine, but it's a lot better than deals they're getting from other places.

So last point on this is as we traveled around, a criticism is we are extremely uncomfortable advocating for American companies and American solutions in these capitals. And so the chambers of commerce and American companies near the embassy, when we meet with them, they were frustrated because the PRC would roll in with bribes and cash and stuff, and we would lose these deals over and over again. Whereas if we had just a little bit more support from the foreign commercial services and others at the US embassies, our people up front, we would get our best diplomats in front of our partners, and those diplomats are our businesses. It's our businesspeople. It's gone wrong in the past – United Fruit Company in Central America, I get it. But from my experience in the region, American business put the best face of America forward in their every order. And, you know – twenty-five thousand in the State Department, Foreign Service Officers – a lot more business people out there in the world than that.

RECOMMENDATIONS ON TAIWAN CONTINGENCY PREPAREDNESS

ASEAN Wonk: You brought up some good points there. There’s often a focus on strings coming in with U.S. assistance, but actually there are actually irrespective of the source: the strings are just different and the elites and regimes may interpret those strings differently, whether it's USAID or a private US company or it's coming from China, so on and so forth. Some of these also relate to companies themselves. Some of these big companies market themselves as global companies not US companies, so it’s more difficult for people to fully realize the connection between the US and individual brands.

I wanted to switch for a bit to security issues and a couple of key flashpoints. One is the Taiwan question which you’ve looked at for a long time from various perspectives. We’ve seen U.S. officials talk more about how China has moved from what they characterize as preparations to really more of rehearsals for a Taiwan scenario. We're also seeing countries like the Philippines do more with Taiwan, some of which has come out in the public domain, others not so much. More governments are also quietly thinking through some of the scenarios for their own interests, whether it’s securing their own citizens or responses if there is a military scenario. What's your sense of regional preparedness for these scenarios in Southeast Asia, and what more needs to be done and what could be done better?

General Stilwell: I guess to be blunt…

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Our guest today is Dr. Pushpanathan Sundram, who previously served as a former ASEAN deputy secretary general and has over thirty years of experience working across regional issues. We will start talking about ASEAN's newly-released vision out to 2045 and evolving initiatives out to the next round of regional summitry later this year. Be sure to tune in as we go through a range of other subjects, including geopolitical flashpoint management in Southeast Asia as well as geoeconomic priorities amid developments like tariff wars, BRICS enlargement and ASEAN-GCC-China summitry.

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INSIDER’S PERSPECTIVE ON NEW ASEAN VISION 2045

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the podcast Nathan, and I wanted to start, if we could, on ASEAN's new vision 2045, which was publicly released in late May alongside events tied to the summit. As you well know, this is something that's been in the works for a few years already even though it's just been publicly released. As somebody who has been working with ASEAN from the inside, including as deputy secretary general, you've seen the trajectory of this organization up to date. How would you grade or assess this new Vision 2045 that was released within ASEAN's broader trajectory?

Dr. Pushpanathan Sundram: Thank you, Prashanth, for the invitation to this podcast. I'm pleased to talk about something that's very close to me, ASEAN. The ASEAN Vision 2045, I would say, is an ambitious plan for twenty years, but it's backed by structure. I was involved in drafting the first ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint. We have put in a lot of things there, but we realized that ASEAN will need time to actually implement. So this time, they are really looking at it in a more in-depth perspective in terms of looking at the vision plus the structures needed. In fact, for the economic community itself, they have five-year plans, strategic plans. They've come out with strategic plans for all the communities under this Vision 2045. So the political security community, economic community, social cultural community, and the master plan on the connectivity aspect of it. So we look at the AEC and connectivity strategic plan as they call it now. They don't call it a blueprint strategic plan anymore. They are five years. The others are ten years.

So each of the plans have a number of goals and measures. I counted around total all the four strategic plans will have about five hundred measures or so. So it's quite a detailed plan. The thing is if you look at an ASEAN plan itself, what is important to realize is that sometimes it's aspirational. Sometimes it's very broad. But I think what it needs is the depth. So even if you look at the various plans, right, the 2025 plan, the secretary general actually mentioned that the political security blueprint has now achieved 99.6 percent, economic blueprint around 97 percent, and then the sociocultural about 99 percent, and the master plan on ASEAN connectivity 83.9 percent. These figures look very good actually. But if you really look at it, I would say, yes, they may have implemented it from the broad sense of all the measures. But when you really go into the depth of it, that is where the problem is. Because if you don't really tackle the depth, then you will not see much change. So I think that's where the crux of the matter is when you look at the blueprints.

“The thing is if you look at an ASEAN plan itself, what is important to realize is that sometimes it's aspirational. Sometimes it's very broad. But I think what it needs is the depth.”

Now let me just give you some examples. For example, ASEAN has done very well on the tariff side, reducing tariffs. So, 99 percent of all tariffs are now down. But if you look at the non-tariff barriers, it continues to be a challenge, I mean, especially, say, in the agricultural sector, there are still high tariffs. Now on the political side, the crisis response to Myanmar or the Rohingya crisis was slow and constrained by consensus. And then the human rights declaration remains nonbinding, and there is, I would say, lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. So if you really look at the 2045 plan, it’s very good, but the weakness will be in the enforcement and timely action. So this is an area that I hope ASEAN will look at when they develop the structure to implement this twenty years plan.

EVOLVING APPROACH TO REGIONAL STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS

ASEAN Wonk: Right. This is the first ASEAN twenty-year vision – the previous vision was ten years. But as you said, they have these strategic plans on different timelines, so they can be updated from time to time. How does this relate to the fast-changing world that we are facing in right now? It does seem like there's an attempt to balance responsiveness with the broader vision so that ASEAN is able to stay on track for the long term. What are your thoughts on this given that this is something that ASEAN has been grappling with since the time you were there?

Dr. Pushpanathan Sundram: Yeah. So we had previously what we called Vision 2020, if you recall. So that was also a very long vision. And then in between, we had the AEC blueprint and the various blueprints and so on. So I remember my time, the blueprint was seven years implementation, 2009 to 2015. And then we had a ten-year plan. Now we have a twenty-year plan. One, it shows that ASEAN will need more time actually to implement. Actually, if you really want to implement it in-depth, I think it will take time. So it's good that on the economic community as well as the connectivity aspects, they have a shorter term five-year plan because things are changing so fast, and there's so much economic uncertainty. So having these five-year plans, strategic plans, I think the economic one is going to be 2026 to 2030 or so. So that's going to be very important, actually. So every five years, they relook at what's happening because I think ASEAN cannot work in isolation by itself. It has to really look at what's going on out there. So I think that's important to have that kind of short plan, and then they make adjustments.

So under the new 2045 plan, they have these implementation mechanisms like the annual progress reports, the midterm review in 2030, and the final assessment in 2045. Then they will create some dashboard, and I think external evaluation teams will look at it and track and verify it. So I think they're putting in those mechanisms so they can track the progress.

ADJUSTING TO GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL CONTESTATION

ASEAN Wonk: I agree with the point you made earlier about ASEAN needing to adjust to a fast-changing world, and Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim mentioned at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that the region has to hold its own ground amid a series of challenges including tariff wars and U.S.-China competition via what he called active non-alignment. He has referenced some of the measures being taken, including the first-ever ASEAN-China-GCC summit and a new ASEAN geoeconomics task force. What is your sense of how Southeast Asia and ASEAN are holding the ground in this changing world?

Dr. Pushpanathan Sundram: Yeah. I think ASEAN will be facing a lot of challenges. As you know, ASEAN centrality is going to be still very important for all of us. So I think ASEAN will have to adopt a strategy where it's working with the world in a sense.

Like the U.S. tariffs. ASEAN as a whole has decided not to retaliate but to cooperate and work with the US. So I think that’s a good strategy in the sense that we want to see how we can further progress in terms of the tariff negotiation. So each country will do its part. The aim is to work out an amicable solution bilaterally with each of the ASEAN countries and the US. At the same time, I think this is an opportunity for ASEAN to really look internally. So, one of the things that is going to be very important is this upgrade of the ASEAN trade in goods agreement, ATIGA. ASEAN has learned from the COVID pandemic situation that intra-ASEAN trade is so important. So during the COVID pandemic, the intra-ASEAN trade was a buffer. So I think they recognize this.

“Like the US tariffs…I think this is an opportunity for ASEAN to really look internally…”

So ASEAN is now concluding the protocol, expected to conclude, I think, by end of the next summit possibly early 2026. The focus is going to be on tariff simplification, non-tariff barrier reduction, rules of origin, streamlining, and so on. So I think that's going to be important. That will enhance intra-ASEAN trade, which is still hovering around, say, 22 to 25 percent. It's not growing. So one of the reasons it’s not growing is because of non-tariff barriers, then the streamlining of the custom procedures and so on. So I think that will be very important, the ATIGA upgrade.

Then I think you're also aware about the Digital Economic Framework Agreement (DEFA) that ASEAN is looking at. From what I understand, the final negotiations are underway. This is going to be a very important agreement, actually, because it will cover data flows, cybersecurity, digital ID, e-commerce, fintech, and taxation, for example. So outside other regions, other minilaterals are also looking at it, so it's important for ASEAN to really work on this and actually get it done soon. Hopefully by this year or next year, we will be able to move forward with this particular DEFA.

Then, of course, looking at the minilaterals itself, there are so many of them mushrooming. It's how ASEAN will deal with that. So I think ASEAN has really looked at it. The second GCC summit, is actually one of the responses because ASEAN is trying to see how it can work with GCC in terms of tourism, trade, investment, and so on. In fact, I think two years ago, GCC mooted the idea of a free trade agreement (FTA). And ASEAN was lukewarm then, but now I understand that after the summits, they have taken a position to seriously study whether there could be an FTA.

And then, of course, they had this first GCC, ASEAN, and China summit. I think that's another important summit because we have, for example, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership there. China is there. ASEAN is there. And there is also talk about whether they can expand the RCEP to include the GCC countries, which I think is not a bad idea because GCC is a growing region, and they're interested in ASEAN. So there could be something that ASEAN officials can look at.

So I think there's a lot of opportunities out there for ASEAN to tap. I think what is important is making use of the ASEAN platform. We have, I think, very good platforms like the ASEAN post ministerial conferences where we engage all the dialogue partners. Then we have the plus one summits and the plus ten summits. So these are areas where ASEAN can use the platform, maintain its centrality, and then work through that in terms of looking at how it can kind of further engage our dialogue partners.

Most of our dialogue partners, the main ones have FTAs with us, free trade agreements. I mean, ASEAN has already been working on upgrading the China FTA. Now I think they have also made, some recommendation to Japan to look at similar thing, for Korea, they wanted to do it next year, I think they've advanced to this year. So ASEAN is actually taking effort in terms of looking at how to upgrade the FTAs, how to improve the ASEAN free trade area, and then how to link up with other regions. I mean, look at other FTAs outside Asia. GCC could be one. They're also engaging Latin America and so on. So I think this is the way to go. So while we look at dealing with the US on the tariffs, ASEAN is looking internally as well as with his partners in terms of, growth.

STRATEGIES FOR MANAGING TRUMP TARIFFS

ASEAN Wonk: And you mentioned the tariff negotiations. We’ve seen ASEAN take a regional position in terms of not retaliating, but we’re also not surprisingly seeing bilateral negotiations with the United States because all these countries also need to engage in that format. What is your sense of how ASEAN as a grouping and the bilateral track are actually balanced or calibrated between the Southeast Asian countries?

Dr. Pushpanathan Sundram: Yeah. This has been, I would say, a historical problem. Even if you look at the FTAs itself, right, when ASEAN negotiates, we are not negotiating as ASEAN as one. So if we look at the FTAs, there are ten different lists. Each country will require a list, and then the dialogue partner will provide a list. So that's how ASEAN has always been functioning. So I'm not surprised that they want to go into a bilateral negotiation because each of them have different strengths, and they have different advantages in terms of the US. Thailand, for example, is one of the major exporters of food agriculture products. Singapore is different, actually. So you cannot have a unified ASEAN position on that. So what they have done, I think, is correct in terms of saying that, generally, they agree that all of us will cooperate with the US. We're not retaliating. And then each of them are actually negotiating it separately. But that's how we are set up, actually. So this is not feasible for ASEAN to go into a regional kind of US negotiation.

The proposal for a US ASEAN summit was good. I hope the US will consider that, or something similar to that maybe at the minister's level. So that will be a good platform for both sides to really talk about one of the big issues, because I think ASEAN considers US as one of the major trade partners. The US is still the number one investor in the region. So I think it's important to work with the US on this.

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2026: FLASHPOINT MANAGEMENT AND DATAPOINTS TO WATCH

ASEAN Wonk: I wanted to move our conversation forward to what we might expect in 2026 and beyond within ASEAN. In terms of the flashpoint management picture, we’re going to be seeing major developments with Myanmar’s election expected as early as December this year and the South China Sea being front and center as we head to the Philippines ASEAN chairmanship and arbitral tribunal ruling next year. Given your experience working within ASEAN, what are you expecting on both of these flashpoints in the rest of 2025 and heading into 2026, along with other datapoints to watch?

Dr. Pushpanathan Sundram: Okay…

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