This volume starts with interviews of two former senior Asian officials: Han-koo Yeo, former minister of trade of the Republic of Korea, and Dino Patti Djalal, former vice foreign minister of Indonesia. Mr. Yeo reiterates the importance of U.S. economic engagement and leadership to help manage the challenges facing both developed and developing countries in Asia. While recognizing that the United States is not returning to a trade liberalization agenda, he finds new arrangements such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) useful in addressing today’s economic challenges and warns against U.S. protectionism that could leave the region with fewer choices for investments and markets.
Dino Patti Djalal analyzes the election choice in terms of U.S. predictability and likeability, noting that though former president Trump’s policies were unpopular in Indonesia, Kamala Harris has yet to advance her vision for the Asian region. Mr. Djalal hopes the United States will prioritize three key areas for Indonesia and the developing Southeast Asia — commerce, technology, and educational exchange. Meanwhile, Indonesia welcomes the U.S. military role in stabilizing the South China Sea and ensuring sea lanes of communication remain open and accessible without forcing a strategic choice between the United States and China.
Next, Neil Thomas and Lizzi Li tackle the future of U.S.-China relations through the lens of political economy, noting that a bipartisan Washington consensus to be tough on China will persist for the foreseeable future. The key question is how the candidates will pursue competition — through tariffs to address trade imbalances in the Trump scenario or perhaps through the lens of human rights and values in a Harris scenario. Thomas and Li recommend prioritizing leader-to-leader diplomacy, enhancing dialogues and exchanges, and seeking cooperation on existential threats, including climate change and AI governance.
We then move to global issues with an Asia focus, with essays on economic security and science and technology diplomacy, as well as prospects for climate progress in the U.S.-China context.
Jane Mellsop and Mariko Togoshi outline key priorities for the G7 economic security agenda and discuss how Asian countries are affected by supply chain restructuring, friendshoring, and other methods to create resilience in international trade. They explore how the U.S. “small yard, high fence” strategy may adjust over time. Mellsop and Togoshi recommend that countries of the region adopt the G7 agenda to create a stronger, more resilient international defense against economic coercion.
Akshay Mathur and Helen Zhang address science and technology in the international context, noting that many Asian countries are participating or leading bilateral and multilateral agreements on digital partnerships and tech governance. A key issue between a Harris scenario and a Trump scenario is tech regulation — will the United States use government tools to shape the tech industry and how will those policies affect global governance? Mathur and Zhang recommend the next U.S. administration build on existing partnerships to deepen tech cooperation with Asia.
Li Shuo and Kate Logan consider how climate factors into the two candidates’ likely approaches to U.S.-China relations and global climate action, warning that the world cannot afford the United States to minimize its climate ambition in service of unilateralism, protectionism, or strategic competition. The two scenarios are perhaps starkest in this essay, reflecting the authors’ sense that climate has become one of the most politicized issues in the United States. Li and Logan recommend U.S. and Chinese leadership insulate climate from the more contentious bilateral agenda, urge other countries to broaden cooperation with one another, and point to China’s industrial decarbonization as the leading trend to watch.
Turning to subregions, the next two essays summarize priorities for the U.S.-ASEAN relationship, particularly in trade, as well as a changing U.S. approach to South Asia after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
Shay Wester and Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit note that diversification away from China is driving U.S. trade and investment with ASEAN but that the countries of Southeast Asia want to avoid choosing sides between the two major powers. This may be a more difficult balance under a Trump administration if it pursues robust decoupling from China, although ASEAN may also be under renewed scrutiny for environmental and labor protections under a Harris administration. The authors recommend ASEAN strengthen its own regional integration and pursue diversified trade relationships.
Farwa Aamer and Vivek Mishra look at U.S. suspicion of China’s influence in South Asia as a dominant factor driving policy after the United States left Afghanistan. The United States and India are pulling together amid rising tension with China, while other countries of the region calibrate to shifting U.S. interests and expectations. Aamer and Mishra recommend that South Asia prepare for both a Trump scenario, which would necessitate an active contribution to burden sharing, and a Harris scenario, which would focus more on good governance and democratic development, especially for countries in transition such as Bangladesh.
Finally, the volume concludes on security issues. The effects of the election on U.S. alliances are explored through a piece on U.S. relations with Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK), and a piece on U.S.-Australia relations and AUKUS. The final essay addresses opportunities and challenges for the United States and China to manage their bilateral security competition.
Emma Chanlett-Avery, Duyeon Kim, and Yuka Koshino explore U.S. alliance relations in Northeast Asia, noting that both Tokyo and Seoul have concerns about maintaining the international rules-based order with U.S. leadership increasingly looking inward. They contrast the candidates in terms of style, with a Trump 2.0 raising anxiety over contentious burden-sharing issues and likely to diminish pressure on the two allies to do more together. The authors recommend that U.S. allies in the region continue to develop their own latticework of cooperative arrangements and take a more proactive role on both regional security and global issues such as the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
Anthony Bubalo and Dominique Fraser provide a view from Australia on its own alliance relationship with the United States and the future of the AUKUS security arrangement between Washington, London, and Canberra. Noting the longtime horizon of AUKUS — through 2075 —the authors find that Australian public support needs an equally lengthy plan to maintain enthusiasm for the costs of the project and the partnership with a sometimes volatile United States. Bubalo and Fraser recommend the governments start with an active and affirmative public messaging campaign on the benefits of the alliance and the need for investment in long-term capabilities.
Finally, Lyle Morris and Wu Xinbo consider the future of the U.S.-China relationship through the lens of security issues. While “strategic competition” will remain the central framing device for the United States, Trump and Harris are likely to emphasize different factors of competition — with the former more focused on trade as a barometer and the latter likely to continue high-level communication while pursuing deeper relationships with allies and partners. However, it remains to be seen how a second Trump administration would handle political issues and diplomacy with China or how a Harris administration would approach bilateral trade.
As a whole, the volume speaks to common assumptions about the two candidates that there would be significant continuity in their approaches to foreign policy and to the Asian region from the Trump-Pence administration and the Biden-Harris administration. These assumptions are supported by candidate statements and likely personnel appointments.
The contributors also identify a number of macro trends that are likely to persist over the next four years: efforts to de-risk global trade and investment from both security concerns and resiliency concerns; efforts for U.S. administrations to maintain majority support at home by bolstering the domestic economy; strategic competition with China and the need to work more closely with allies and partners to maintain a favorable balance of power in the region; and the relatively narrow lens on global issues — such as climate change, economic integration for lower- and middle-income countries, and use of international institutions — that these trends have engendered.
One of the key questions moving forward is how events will shift policy by reprioritizing U.S. attention and resources. The war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate in which thousands of young men are still laying down their lives. The conflict between Israel and its neighbors is widening into regional instability. Warming global temperatures are generating unprecedented weather events that are destroying ecosystems and livelihoods. And political volatility in the United States in which both sides of the political aisle feel increasing enmity toward the other side is reverberating through global politics; driving maximalist positions; and stymieing compromise, including within international institutions.
If the United States can articulate and implement an Asia policy that shows how U.S. global leadership can manage and resolve these worrisome trends, then America will be in an excellent position to thrive amid twenty-first-century challenges. As a first step, policymakers should consider the recommendations in this volume as guiding principles toward effectively taking full advantage of Asia’s dynamism, diversity of capabilities and needs, and nexus of security challenges to create a stronger, more prosperous world.
Rorry Daniels is Managing Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
