This policy report is born of the 2017 RSIS workshop titled “The Trump Era and the Trade Architecture in Asia Pacific”, which brought together experts in international political economy and trade from Australia, China, Japan, Singapore and the United States to discuss the transformation of the global and regional trade orders. At the workshop, participants offered various perspectives on the changing nature of the trade architecture in the Asia Pacific region amid the uncertainty brought on by Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president. The discussions covered a wide range of issues, including U.S. foreign policy, ongoing mega-regional free trade agreements,...

How will the Trump administration affect American trade policy and the global trade regime? Since he announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2015, Donald Trump has firmly maintained his protectionist stance on the issues of trade and immigration. Throughout his campaign, Trump almost never stopped criticising existing trade deals and America’s foreign trade partners, a stance that resonated well with his conservative white supporters. In his “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again”, he clearly pledged to protect American workers through a set of protectionist measures, including withdrawal from the TPP, renegotiation of the North American Free Trade...

The dramatic change of the U.S. position on the much-discussed TPP, as evidenced in President Trump honouring his campaign promise to withdraw from the agreement, is a major development for thinking about the evolution of region-wide trade arrangements. Contrary to what a majority of international commentary suggests, China and the United States are not seas apart when it comes to the search for Asia Pacific region-wide trade arrangements. I argue that the time has come for adopting a third template—one that is not a choice between the TPP and RCEP—to harmonise trade policies.

Throughout the history of globalisation,...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is known for his conservative nationalist ideology, has been playing the role of a vocal advocate of the TPP internationally as well as domestically. How could he play this role despite domestic opposition? By answering this question, we can have some clues to speculate what Japan can or cannot do in constructing the regional trade order after Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP.

Why did Abe commit himself to the TPP? There are two reasons. First, he believed that the TPP can be a means of boosting the Japanese economy through more global competition. This would...

The Trump administration has been in place for slightly over two weeks and Trump’s full Cabinet is yet to be in place. My analysis is, therefore, an early analysis. It comprises three parts: Trump’s evolving economic policies, their impact on ASEAN and how ASEAN should respond.

Trump seems to be sticking to his key campaign pitchlines of “America First”, “Make America Great” and bringing back 28 million jobs lost since the global financial crisis. From candidate Trump to President-elect Trump and the 45th president of the United States, his rhetoric has not changed much. Trump is an “angry” president and...

The “Trump Shock” has changed the trade policy calculus for the major economic powers in the Asia Pacific. But understanding how the regional trade architecture is evolving depends not only on leadership but also followership: How are the Asia Pacific’s middle powers, which provide the ballast for regional integration, likely to respond to the new trade environment? These economies have very different trade interests from the region’s great powers, and are likely to place considerable emphasis on multilateral rather than bilateral initiatives, particularly the ongoing RCEP negotiations. Three of the Asia Pacific’s middle powers—Australia, Korea and Indonesia—illustrate this...

Like many Americans, Asians were shocked by the election of Donald Trump. Current anxieties go beyond the normal skittishness that accompanies every American presidential transition. The Trump administration is frightening on at least three dimensions: Trump as an individual; Trump’s team; and Trump’s Asia policies.

Consider first his personality. Months of campaigning plus his first weeks in office reveal a man who is thin-skinned, narcissistic, racist, misogynistic and intolerant of any combination of hard facts and irrefutable evidence that challenges his imagined alternative. He is a master of the Orwellian lie—falsities repeated frequently and loudly enough to drown out...

The election of Trump as the 45th president of the United States has shocked not only Americans but also the Asia Pacific countries. Despite Trump’s recent softening of his tough stance on China, especially after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 11 April 2017, his campaign promises and some of his controversial policies have posed challenges to the existing trading framework in Asia Pacific and to U.S.-Asia relations. How should governments in the Asia Pacific region react to the uncertainties brought on by the Trump presidency in the trade architecture specifically and in other issue areas broadly? A...