In the days following the January 2025 inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, many Asian governments believed Trump¡¯s second term would bring benefits for the region.

The White House promised a tough line against China, which had been menacing other states in regional waters and also pledged to combat Beijing¡¯s supposedly illegal trade actions. Washington had already started discussing tariffs and a more transactional trade approach, but most Asian governments were accustomed to dealing with such transactionalism. In the first Trump administration, Asian leaders like former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were among the most effective in dealing with the U.S. president, and many politicians in the region felt ready to handle a second Trump presidency.

They were wrong. In 2025, the U.S. administration¡¯s policies shook up Asian economics, trade and security more than any White House in decades. Waves of imposed on both Asian allies and countries historically shunned by Washington upended supply chains and entire trade flows in a region home to the and some of the world¡¯s biggest exporters. (The White House has raised the United States¡¯ overall tariff rate to levels not seen since the Great Depression.)

Major exporters from Vietnam to Japan struggled to address the White House¡¯s insistence that any U.S. bilateral trade deficits suggested other countries were taking advantage of the United States. Often, these states agreed to bad deals in which they reluctantly accepted tariffs on their products to keep exporting to America. (The U.S. even has used import and export measures to punish countries it has a with, like Australia.) The unpredictability of the tariffs has hampered manufacturing and services across Asia, has begun to undermine growth and has led trading economies to look to new partners beyond the United States, including China.

Meanwhile, the two regional and global giants, China and the United States, engaged in a nearly year-long trade war, until China demonstrated it could withstand American pressure and the White House essentially backed down.

At the same time, by the United States Agency for International Development, shutting down U.S.-backed media such as Radio Free Asia ¡ª popular in autocratic states ¡ª and leaving allies uncertain as to whether U.S. forces would if needed, the Trump White House harmed U.S. popularity in Asia while boosting the appeal of (and ) in the region.

And politically, the White House, which wanted conservative, populist parties to win control of many Asian countries, seemed, through its actions, to actually foster electoral victories by more liberal, anti-populist parties. Positioning itself as a bulwark against the Trump administration, the previously unpopular Australian Labor Party was reelected handily in May....