How Trump’s Coercion Could Backfire in Asia

A century after the “wedding of the oceans”—the moment when U.S. President Woodrow Wilson ordered the final step in the creation of the Panama Canal, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and reshaping global trade—the United States is seeking to regain its influence over the waterway. In his inaugural address in January, President Donald Trump claimed that China was “operating” the canal and vowed that the United States would be “taking it back.” At a press conference, Trump refused to rule out using economic coercion, or even military force, to get his way—news reports later revealed that the White House had directed the Pentagon to draw up plans to seize the waterway by force. These threats seem to have had an effect: Panama has withdrawn from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and accepted the sale of port operations at each end of the canal by the Hong Kong holding company CK Hutchison to a group of investors led by the U.S. firm BlackRock. China’s antitrust regulator has since launched a review, stalling the deal, but whatever the ultimate fate of the canal, the episode sent a signal that Washington is willing to present countries with a stark ultimatum: side with the United States or face the consequences.

Washington is deploying coercive, us-or-them approaches elsewhere, too. Trump has demanded concessions in response to sweeping tariffs, pushed India to abandon an effort to reduce U.S. dollar dominance, and conditioned U.S. support for Ukraine on the country’s willingness to accept a peace deal with Russia, telling President Volodymyr Zelensky to “make a deal or we’re out.” Most explicitly, in February, Trump established a “fast track” investment process for “specified allies and partners”—but only on the condition that they refrain from “partnering” with “foreign adversaries in corresponding areas.”

If the United States sticks to such hard-line tactics, countries around the world will face difficult choices. Nowhere will these choices be harder than in Asia, where governments have long hedged their bets between China and the United States. The United States has for decades contributed to the region’s peace and prosperity and is valued for it, even as those contributions have also benefited the United States. Even today, the region does not want to have to choose between the United States and China. Without a strong U.S. presence, the region’s strategic options will narrow and governments will lose much of their ability to press China for better behavior. If they are forced to choose, countries will have to weigh U.S. leverage, the reliability of Washington’s promises, their economic ties with China, and potential alternatives. Coercion could backfire. Although it will not always be China that benefits—many Asian countries hedge beyond the great powers—China’s geographic proximity, extensive economic ties with the region, and skill in turning economic engagement into strategic advantage position it to gain the most. The United States can force countries to choose—but it might not like their answers.

FROM VELVET GLOVE TO IRON FIST

Asian countries have long feared being forced to choose between the United States and China. In recent years, although Washington has pressed its allies and partners to break with Beijing on specific issues—for example, banning Huawei in 5G infrastructure, restricting China’s access to advanced semiconductors, and excluding Chinese firms from undersea cable networks—it has largely tolerated hedging between the two superpowers. Allies and partners were free to maintain wide-ranging ties with China while benefiting from the U.S. security umbrella. American officials reassured foreign capitals that Washington was not forcing them to choose.

Today, Washington’s tolerance appears to be giving way to a more coercive approach. It remains unclear what the Trump administration’s ultimatum will be in every instance. Demands could include economic decoupling, such as curbing Chinese investment or restricting trade, cutting off joint military exercises with China, or treating Beijing as a strategic threat. Even if Washington stops short of requiring wholesale alignment, an expanding list of specific demands will shrink other countries’ room for maneuver.

The administration may see the best chance of success in Northeast Asia, where Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all already closely aligned with the United States. Both Japan and Taiwan view China as a direct threat to their security interests. In 2023, Tokyo committed to a major defense buildup, including plans to acquire U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. In 2025, it followed through by approving a record defense budget and plans to deploy long-range strike capabilities in coordination with Washington. Taiwan has likewise expanded military ties with the United States. In 2023, it began sending troops to the United States for joint training exercises, and in 2024, Washington approved two separate arms sales, one worth nearly $2 billion for advanced air defense and radar systems and another valued at $385 million for spare parts and maintenance support.

South Korea’s view is more nuanced. Seoul’s 2022 Indo-Pacific strategy refers to China as “a key partner for achieving prosperity and peace”—but like Japan, South Korea attended the NATO summit earlier that year which issued a strategic concept stating that China’s “ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.” In 2023, Seoul set aside historical grievances to join Japan and the United States in a trilateral security partnership to counter regional threats, including China.

Yet while all three U.S. partners will work hard to keep Washington onside, full economic decoupling from China will be a stretch. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all count China as their largest trading partner, and Trump’s unpredictability is destabilizing relations. In March, just weeks after Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited Washington for a trip that he considered a diplomatic success, Trump complained that the U.S.-Japanese security pact was unfair. Days earlier, in an address to Congress, Trump questioned U.S. military support for South Korea, despite Seoul’s agreement in late 2024 to boost its contribution to the cost of keeping American troops in the country by 14 percent, the largest annual rise in nearly two decades. Trump has also accused Taiwan of “stealing” the U.S. chip industry, prompting the Taiwan-based chip manufacturing company TSMC to announce plans to invest $100 billion in the United States. Allies and partners now have little confidence that a warm reception today will not be followed by the cold shoulder tomorrow.

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

If pulling Northeast Asia further away from China will be difficult, moving Southeast Asia will be even harder. The region has long prioritized hedging between the great powers. The legacy of colonialism and Cold War entanglements that drew parts of the region into superpower rivalries and proxy wars left many Southeast Asian countries wary of aligning too closely with any one major power. Indeed, in 1967, a group of those countries created the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) partly to guard against external interference. While the region values U.S. security engagement and the United States is its largest source of foreign direct investment, China is its largest trading partner and most U.S. investment is concentrated in a single country, Singapore.

What is more, elite support for the United States in the region has started to weaken. In September 2024, I argued in Foreign Affairs that Washington was losing Southeast Asia. That was based in part on the 2024 ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute’s annual survey of government officials, academics, journalists, nonprofit employees, businesspeople, and staff from regional or international organizations across the region. Last year, the survey showed, for the first time, a majority of respondents saying ASEAN should align with China over the United States, if forced to choose. This year’s poll, which was released last week, showed the United States regaining a narrow lead, although the numbers remain close: 52 percent of respondents said ASEAN should side with the United States and 48 percent with China. The most dramatic reversal came in Laos, which swung 20 percentage points back toward the United States—after having recorded the steepest drop the previous year.

The erosion in U.S. standing in 2024 likely reflected dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy, especially the country’s support for Israel in the conflict in Gaza, and its limited economic engagement in the region compared with China’s growing footprint. Those factors were enough to give China a narrow edge (50.5 percent to 49.5 percent), although more than half of respondents still expressed “little” or “no” confidence in China to “do the right thing” in global affairs.

The 2025 rebound appears to have been driven above all by growing alarm over China’s behavior in the South China Sea. This year, 52 percent of respondents cited “aggressive behavior in the South China Sea” as their top geopolitical concern, up from second place at 40 percent in 2024. Even landlocked Laos saw a sharp rise: 42 percent ranked the South China Sea as their top concern, up from just nine percent the year before. Although Laos has no territorial claims in the South China Sea, its 2024 ASEAN chairmanship likely heightened its sensitivity to the dispute.

Southeast Asia has long prioritized hedging between the great powers.

Perceptions of stronger U.S. leadership under Trump may also have played a role. Among the 41 percent of respondents who expected greater U.S. engagement in Southeast Asia under the new administration, nearly 39 percent cited Trump’s tough stance on China as helping to maintain regional balance, while 32 percent believed strong U.S. leadership could help resolve global conflicts. Confidence in the United States as a strategic partner also rose: 45 percent of respondents were confident or very confident in U.S. reliability in 2025, up from just 35 percent the year before.

But the improved U.S. standing in the 2025 survey should not be mistaken for a decisive shift. For one thing, the survey was conducted from early January to mid-February—before Trump’s April 2 announcement of dramatic new tariffs on U.S. allies and partners across Asia, and before the Trump administration’s sharp turn away from long-standing European allies and partners. The survey, moreover, likely overstates the number of governments that would align with the United States over China if forced to choose, as it includes nongovernment elites, who are more likely than government officials to favor the United States. Although a majority of respondents in five of the ten ASEAN countries—the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Singapore—leaned toward the United States, several of those governments, including Myanmar and Cambodia, depend heavily on Beijing.

Even among countries with defense ties or strategic cooperation with the United States, alignment is not a given—and in some cases, is unlikely. The United States enjoys its strongest standing with the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally. In 2023, Manila granted the United States access to four additional military sites, three facing Taiwan and one facing the South China Sea, under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, a pact signed in 2014. These sites added to the five bases the United States already uses. Relations between the Philippines and China, in contrast, have deteriorated in recent years because of escalating clashes between Philippine and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea. Yet the country’s economic ties with China, particularly in agriculture and manufacturing, remain strong, and its leaders want to avoid being drawn into a U.S.-Chinese conflict. The new EDCA bases, for example, are designed, officially at least, to be used more for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief than military operations, and Manila has turned down U.S. offers of assistance during clashes with Chinese forces over resupply missions to Filipino troops on Second Thomas Shoal.

Manila’s caution stems primarily from its desire to avoid conflict with China. But anxieties about U.S. reliability are never far away. The Philippines continues to receive strong signals of U.S. support: it enjoys bipartisan backing in Congress; U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reaffirmed the “ironclad” U.S. commitment to the Philippines under the U.S.-Philippine mutual defense treaty; and the State Department has reiterated that the treaty covers attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including its coast guard, anywhere in the South China Sea. Further reassurance came during U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s late-March visit to Manila, where he met with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. The two sides reaffirmed their security ties and announced planned initiatives, including the deployment of additional advanced military capabilities, bilateral training for high-end operations, greater defense industrial cooperation, and a joint cyber campaign—all aimed at restoring deterrence. Hegseth’s visit offered Manila a measure of relief after a warning earlier in March by the Philippine ambassador to the United States, Jose Romualdez, that Manila must “be ready” for a scenario in which the U.S. alliance did not hold in a crisis—but worries remain. What was once bipartisan backing for Ukraine has failed to guarantee sustained U.S. support. And the early months of the Trump administration have made clear that decision-making ultimately rests with a president who is both erratic and wary of foreign military entanglements.

U.S. ties with Thailand, another treaty ally, have frayed since the United States failed to bail out the country’s banking sector during the 1997 Asian financial crisis and downgraded military cooperation after the Thai army seized power in 2006 and again in 2014. Although the two countries have continued to participate in annual multilateral military exercises, cooperation elsewhere has waned. China has stepped in to fill the gap by expanding military and economic cooperation. In 2016, it overtook the United States to become Thailand’s primary arms supplier, and although the United States carries out more military training and defense dialogue with Thailand, Beijing has been steadily increasing its joint military exercises, such as the Strike-2024 drill, technology transfers, and investments in Thailand’s defense sector. China is also deepening economic ties: apart from being Thailand’s largest trading partner, it also provides technology and expertise for the China-Thailand high-speed rail project, which links the two countries through Laos, and is the driving force behind the Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone, which hosts hundreds of Chinese companies. Those ties mean that Thailand is unlikely to fully align with the United States—but the United States could at least stay in the game if it tried.

Even among countries with ties with the United States, alignment is not a given.

Singapore, although not a U.S. treaty ally, has long been a steadfast security and economic partner. When the Philippines decided to close U.S. military bases at Clark and Subic Bay in 1990, and Malaysia and Indonesia refused to host U.S. forces, Singapore granted the United States access to its air and naval facilities. In 1998, Singapore allowed U.S. forces to use the newly constructed Changi Naval Base, which was purpose-built to accommodate aircraft carriers, even though Singapore has none of its own. U.S.-Singaporean defense ties have expanded since, and Singapore is a crucial hub for U.S. regional economic integration, hosting nearly 6,000 U.S. companies.

But although Singapore remains a close partner, some scenarios would stretch its support. A conflict over Taiwan, in particular, would pose a dilemma for the country’s leaders. A senior Singaporean diplomat privately told me that a U.S. request to allow Singapore-based American ships, planes, and missiles to operate against China would be a “nightmare scenario.” Senior Singaporean officials have been noncommittal when asked how they would respond to a Taiwan conflict, saying only that it would depend on the circumstances. Singapore also fears that ASEAN could splinter if member states are forced to pick sides, weakening the group’s ability to act as a bulwark against external pressure and great-power competition.

Vietnam, despite its past and present tensions with China, carefully balances relations between the superpowers. The country’s 2019 defense strategy outlines a policy of “Four Nos”: no military alliances, no siding with one country against another, no foreign bases, and no use of force or threats of the use of force in international relations. In 2023, Vietnam upgraded ties with the United States to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” a level China has enjoyed since 2008, but the country’s leaders remain cautious. Vietnam’s $123 billion trade surplus with the United States—the second highest in Asia after China and the highest in Southeast Asia—has subjected it to high tariffs. The relocation of Chinese firms to Vietnam to bypass Trump’s trade war with China exposes it to further risks. Ultimately, the regime in Hanoi is most concerned with its own survival—and for that, China is a key partner, given the close relationship between the two communist parties.

The slight rebound in U.S. standing in 2025 reversed the previous year’s slide, but the shift appeared to reflect elite frustration with China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, not a deeper reorientation toward the United States. Washington continues to face structural weaknesses in the region, especially in the economic realm, where U.S. initiatives still lag behind China’s in both scale and delivery. Across Southeast Asia, China significantly outpaces the United States in trade, multilateral economic initiatives and infrastructure. Since 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has delivered major projects such as the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail in Indonesia and the Boten-Vientiane railway in Laos—both of which are now up and running, with plans for further expansion. Meanwhile, a slew of U.S.-led initiatives, including the BUILD Act, the Blue Dot Network, and the Build Back Better World initiative, later rebranded as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, have yet to yield tangible results. Washington’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017 and ongoing doubts over its commitment to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the Biden administration’s more limited alternative to the TPP, have further eroded regional confidence. In the 2025 ASEAN survey, 56 percent of respondents identified China as the most influential economic power in the region—down slightly from 60 percent in 2024—while just 15 percent selected the United States. In a region where economics is deeply intertwined with security, economic engagement matters.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE COUNTRIES

Beyond coercion, there is another approach the administration may pursue—or at least flirt with. Rather than forcing allies and partners to cut ties with China, Trump may instead abandon them altogether by striking a “grand bargain” with Chinese President Xi Jinping that divides the world into spheres of influence or by reaching a sweeping economic deal with him. If the administration follows through on either course, it may be more inclined to accommodate Beijing’s concerns over the East China Sea, North Korea, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and elsewhere. Although the prospects of a grand bargain or wide-ranging economic deal appear increasingly slim, given escalating tit-for-tat tariffs that have now pushed rates to well over 100 percent on both sides, a deal cannot be ruled out. It would not be the first time that Trump has reversed course, and he has said that he is open to talks with Beijing.

For many in the region, abandonment is the greater fear. If Washington walks away or accepts Beijing’s primacy in the region, other countries’ strategic autonomy would shrink. Some might respond by deepening regional security cooperation through mechanisms such as ASEAN or smaller groupings. Others may intensify diplomatic efforts with the United States, hoping to blunt the fallout of a deal struck at their expense. Although often seen as distinct paths, coercion and abandonment could be pursued—deliberately or haphazardly—in parallel. This combination would pose the gravest risk for the region: under pressure to choose the United States over China, while simultaneously questioning whether Washington would stand by them if they did.

Compounding regional anxieties is the Trump administration’s treatment of the United States’ longtime allies and partners in Europe—signaling that even countries with close ties to the United States are not immune to poor treatment by Washington. Chinese officials are quietly warning Southeast Asian countries that they could face a similar fate. Although the Indo-Pacific region is a priority for the United States in a way that Europe is not, Trump’s approach thus far has not reassured U.S. allies and partners that he is committed to cooperating with them to achieve common goals. Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement featured high rates on many Asian countries, including Japan (24 percent), South Korea (22 percent), and Taiwan (32 percent), despite their close security ties to Washington and long-standing support for U.S. strategic goals in Asia. The measures have been received with quiet alarm in Northeast Asia, where officials had hoped that alliance contributions would shield them from the economic nationalism that defined Trump’s first term.

Without its allies and partners, U.S. leadership in Asia, and around the world, will erode.

In Southeast Asia, the picture is even starker. The tariffs Trump announced (and then partially paused) hit U.S. treaty allies the Philippines (17 percent) and Thailand (36 percent); key partners such as Singapore (10 percent) and Vietnam (46 percent); and some of the region’s poorest countries, including Cambodia (49 percent), Laos (48 percent), and Myanmar (44 percent), among others. Trump’s tariff blitz makes clear that the United States is not differentiating—at least in the economic realm—between allies, strategic partners, and others: all are equally vulnerable to U.S. demands.

Beyond the United States’ treatment of allies and partners—which exacerbates fears of both coercion and abandonment—there are broader concerns about whether the United States will remain a positive regional presence. Singapore has long advocated for a strong U.S. role to prevent dominance by any single power. Yet at this year’s Munich Security Conference, Singapore’s defense minister noted Asia’s shifting perception of the United States—from “liberator” to “disruptor” to “landlord seeking rent.” If Washington continues to combine pressure with disregard, it risks pushing even governments wary of Beijing into its orbit: China is starting to look like the easier roommate.

Greater U.S. regional influence cannot come through ultimatums and coercion, nor from cutting a deal with Beijing over the heads of U.S. allies and partners. Instead, Washington should honor its commitments, boost trade and investment, step up diplomatic engagement, and respect foreign countries’ agency. The Trump administration may believe that its ultimatums are simply extracting the full value of U.S. security commitments and economic engagement, but this discounts the critical contributions that allies and partners make. The United States risks becoming a power that, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Coercion will ultimately weaken the United States, not strengthen it. Without its allies and partners, U.S. leadership in Asia, and around the world, will erode. This will not make America great again—it will leave it weaker abroad and poorer at home.