Xi Jinping embarks on SE Asia charm offensive

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit suggests Beijing wants “to form alliances to fight back” in its trade war with the US, one expert told Bloomberg: The Trump administration has signaled that Southeast Asian nations must counter China in order to negotiate new trade deals with Washington, but America’s demand to abandon the region’s largest trade partner could push the smaller nations “deeper into the arms of the very country at which [Washington] says its hardline trade policy is mainly targeted,” the Financial Times wrote. Still, no Southeast Asian country “has given up yet on its relationship with America,” The Economist wrote: The importance of US markets and security partnerships was reflected in their “sangfroid” reaction to Trump’s tariffs.

The US-China trade war leaves “less space for middlemen” Southeast Asian economies to maneuver, an expert told The New York Times. Donald Trump’s trade policy puts Asian nations like Vietnam “in a tight spot,” the South China Morning Post wrote: China supplies as much as 90 percent of the raw materials used in Vietnamese apparel exports to the US, but Chinese factories, suddenly cut off from American markets, could “flood [Southeast Asian] markets with cheap goods,” a Chatham House analyst wrote. Instead, Southeast Asian nations should boost intraregional trade, he argued, to “shield themselves from an unpredictable US and avoid being pulled further into unbalanced economic relationships with China.”