The White House Transformed Asia in 2025: Expect Much More in 2026

In 2025, the U.S. administration’s policies revamped Asian economics, trade, and security more than any White House in decades. Waves of tariffs imposed on both Asian allies and countries historically shunned by Washington upended supply chains and entire trade flows in Asia, a region host to the largest free trade zone in the world and some of the biggest exporters in the world.

Major exporters from Vietnam to Japan struggled to address the White House’s insistence that any U.S. bilateral trade deficits suggested other countries were taking advantage of Washington. Often, these states agreed to bad deals in which they reluctantly accepted tariffs on their products to keep exporting to America, raising the United States’ overall tariff rate to levels not seen since the Great Depression. (The U.S. even has used trade punishments against countries it has a trade surplus with, like Australia.) The tariff unpredictability has hampered manufacturing and services across Asia, undermining growth across the continent, and leading trading economies to look to new partners beyond the United States.

Meanwhile, the two regional and global giants, China and the United States, fought a trade war nearly all year, until China demonstrated it could withstand U.S. pressure and the White House basically folded. At the same time, by slashing aid to many parts of Asia, killing U.S.-backed media like Radio Free Asia, and leaving unclear whether U.S. forces would defend allies in the region, the White House made the U.S. less popular in Asia and bolstered the popularity of China (and Europe) in Asia.

And politically, the White House, which wanted conservative, populist parties to win control of many Asian countries, seemed, through its actions, to actually foster electoral victories by more liberal, anti-populist parties.

Will the White House learn from its counterproductive actions in Asia in 2025? It does not seem likely. For more on what to expect from Washington toward Asia in 2026, see my new article in the Japan Times here.