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Expectations are low, no matter who wins, but it would seem that Asia cautiously views US Vice-President Kamala Harris as the better option over Donald Trump . - AFP
Expectations are low, no matter who wins the deadlocked Nov 5 election, but it would seem that Asia cautiously views Vice-President Kamala Harris as the better option. Many would agree with Malaysia’s Deputy Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Liew Chin Tong’s assessment that the difference between Harris and Trump is a matter “not of direction, but intensity”. Neither can turn back the clock to a simpler, unipolar world.
Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan put it pragmatically while speaking to the media after attending the UN General Assembly in New York in September. China sees her continuing Biden’s policy of engagement and worries that people-to-people exchanges will snap if Trump were to become president, said Professor Jia Qingguo from Peking University and Professor Chen Dongxiao, who heads the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
An intriguing proposition is whether there could be an unexpected breakthrough under the unpredictable Trump, who positions himself as a dealmaker. Trump has framed the issue of defending Taiwan in transactional terms, suggesting that support would depend on whether it would be economically beneficial to the US, and criticising Taiwan’s semiconductor industry for allegedly taking “about 100 per cent of our chip business”.
“If Trump gets re-elected and withdraws American troops, South Korea will have to move towards having nuclear capability,” said one analyst, speaking off the record to discuss a sensitive issue. South Korea does not currently possess nuclear weapons, but is concerned about the US rolling back its nuclear umbrella under Trump, even as it faces nuclear threats from North Korea.
Professor Satoru Mori from Keio University, speaking at the Foreign Press Centre of Japan on Oct 11, said: “Some people are worried that Trump might scuttle these frameworks. But Quad was originally conceived during the Trump administration. And US-Japan-South Korea could be considered as an instrument to pressure North Korea.”
“We also expect continued assistance in our defence modernisation through increased foreign military financing, as well as in rallying like-minded countries to support the Philippines in pushing back against China’s illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive actions in the West Philippine Sea,” said Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez, using the Philippines’ term for the part of the South China Sea within its exclusive economic zone, much of which is also claimed by the...
India appears better placed to weather the changing of the guard. It is expected to remain a key part of the American Indo-Pacific policy and as a bulwark against China. Its External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in August that India will be able to work with the US president, “whoever he or she will be”.
But he added: “This should be a reassuring point for Asean countries in being able to anticipate continuity, even in areas which we are not in agreement with, for example, Gaza, compared with the kinds of uncertainty under Trump, for example, stopping military aid to Ukraine.”Trump says his “beautiful” tariffs – a 60 per cent tariff on goods from China and up to 20 per cent on everything else the US imports – will be good for the economy, but corporate America would likely disagree.
“It is very possible that the Trump conversation shifts to one that is about economic security and less about the classic Trump approach to trade.” But Dr Alicia Garcia Herrero, the Hong Kong-based chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis, said China may be able to dodge a bullet.
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