The clashing interests of the United States and China sustain their continuing rivalry in Asia, the main determinant of regional dynamics. The struggle focuses on the Indo-Pacific countries ranging from India in the west to Japan in the northeast, and Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands in the southeast. Other factors in regional dynamics – such as North Korea’s threats and the ongoing civil war in Myanmar – remain secondary.
The major escalation of superpower competition in Asia began with hardened U.S. policies countering the multifaceted adverse challenges from China. These polices began during the first Trump administration (2017-2021) and developed strongly during the Biden administration (2021-2025). To the United States, a hostile China gaining regional leadership and dominance would represent an existential threat comparable to the threat posed by Imperial Japan in the dark days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. For 70 years, major U.S. sacrifices to avoid such dominance by an adversary included very costly wars in Korea and Vietnam.
A centerpiece in President Joe Biden’s argument for re-election – and, following his withdrawal from the race, the election of his vice president, Kamala Harris – in 2024 was his administration’s achievement in building U.S. economic, high technology, and military strengths at home while strengthening growing U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China’s adverse ambitions. He repeatedly claimed to have “checked” China.
Indeed, Biden strengthened the United States domestically with legislation worth $2 trillion supporting modern infrastructure and high technology development. He sustained Trump administration tariffs on Chinese imports and added to them in the fields of high technology and advanced industry. He curbed the sale of U.S. highly advanced semiconductor technology, significantly complicating China’s high technology ambitions.
He and his administration went on the offensive in supporting multilateral international arrangements countering China, including the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan; the AUKUS security and high technology agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom; the Japan-South Korea-U.S. cooperative framework; and various other bilateral and multilateral arrangements. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s support for Russia saw Biden lead Western and Indo-Pacific allies and partners in supporting Ukraine, sanctioning Russia, and deterring Chinese expansionism in Asia.
The Trump Shock in the Indo-Pacific
During the presidential election campaign in 2024, governments and opinion leaders in the Indo-Pacific region were broadly negative in their assessments of candidate Donald Trump. That said, those leaders commonly judged they had successfully weathered the demands of the first Trump government for more equitable trade relations and greater defense contributions. They worked cooperatively with sympathetic administration officials, praised Trump, and used bilateral negotiations to reach agreements less costly than previously anticipated. Following Trump’s re-election, they prepared to do the same in 2025.
This sanguine view disappeared amid the regional shock over dramatic Trump actions reflecting the incoming president’s much greater power and control over the federal government, along with Republican majorities in Congress and control over the Supreme Court, where six out of nine justices were appointed by Republicans, with three of the six appointed by Trump himself. And unlike Trump’s first term, there appeared to be no senior White House or administration leaders prepared to differ with the president in dealing with regional counterparts.
The first weeks of the new administration saw waves of executive orders prompting sweeping changes in U.S. governance. Subsequent tariffs were much worse than anticipated. Allies and partners were treated as harshly as others, with India getting extraordinarily negative treatment. Past U.S. commitments in free trade and other agreements with allies and partners now meant little to nothing.
Abrupt and severe cut backs in U.S. foreign aid were widely criticized in the Indo-Pacific, as were Trump’s demands for control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada, as well as his disputes with leaders of South Africa, Brazil, India, and other countries. He was seen routinely ignoring practices of global governance regarding sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the rules-based order that the United States had long supported, and which allies, partners, and others in the Indo-Pacific depended on for security and well-being.
Trump administration policies restricted and reversed the Biden approach of consultative cooperation with Indo-Pacific allies and partners, as well as NATO and G-7 nations, in countering Chinese challenges. Trump and administration leaders repeatedly complained about allies and partners taking advantage of the United States in national defense, foreshadowing specific Trump demands for substantial increases in their defense spending and payments in military burden sharing agreements. Trump’s harsh treatment of Ukraine and support for Russia’s position on ending the war seriously alarmed the many Indo-Pacific countries that depend on sustained U.S. support in the face of dangerous challenges coming from China, and for some, North Korea.
Rewriting U.S. Indo-Pacific Policy
The second Trump administration has changed, to varying degrees, three longstanding U.S. rationales for constructive engagement with Asia.
First is the security rationale noted above: the United States seeks to avoid the Indo-Pacific region being dominated by a hostile power, thereby posing a direct threat to Washington. Second is the need for constructive U.S. engagement with regional economies, often seen as the post-Cold War world’s most important economic region. And third is the judgment that the United States is well served by sustaining commitments in working cooperatively with allies and partners in supporting a rules-based international order.
In practice, the first rationale was prominent in the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and has been strongly supported this year by top administration national security officials. Though Trump personally continues past practice and rarely comments on this strategy, for now the administration seems generally supportive of this rationale.
The second rationale, however, has been explicitly rejected by the Trump administration, which views the past U.S. policy of constructive economic engagement as a major failure with very serious negative implications for U.S. security and economic well-being. As the Trump administration attempts to solve this problem, some forecast that the U.S. will decouple from the region, returning to the relative isolationism seen a hundred years ago. In fact, the explanations of senior leaders show that the administration’s tariffs and other measures are designed to make U.S. economic engagement with the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere truly favorable for the United States, thereby warranting continued close U.S. economic interaction with the region.
Trump personally has long been disinclined to support the third rationale. Though some senior officials cooperate with allies and partners in seeking national defense objectives to deter China in the Indo-Pacific, the Trump administration has scrapped the heavy positive emphasis on allies and partners in both Europe and Asia seen during the Biden years. And as noted, Trump’s demands for control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada are among the most egregious affronts to the rules-based international order voiced by a U.S. president since the Cold War.
Advances in U.S. Influence in the Indo-Pacific
It’s easy to exaggerate the negatives in Trump’s policy for U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific. On the one hand, bundles of opinion pieces, surveys, and other public documents sharply critical of Trump government initiatives show U.S. influence in the region in steep decline. The dramatic proposed 100 percent escalation of Trump’s tariffs on China announced on October 10 in response to China’s comprehensive restrictions on the export of rare earth products is sure, if implemented, to negatively impact regional economic growth and U.S. regional influence.
However, Trump’s often highly disruptive policies have not yet led to a discernible regional shift against the United States and in favor of China among regional governments. Based on my interviews and consultations with 250 regional specialists since July 2024, government leaders in the Indo-Pacific generally are much more pragmatic in dealing with Trump initiatives than their national media and public opinion.
Any assessment of the cumulative impact of Trump administration actions for U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific rivalry with China can start with a major positive: the Trump government’s success in leveraging the importance of access to the U.S. market through the use of massive and widespread tariffs. The Trump policies have compelled U.S. allies and partners, many regional governments closer to China than to the United States, and also China itself to seek bilateral negotiations with Washington in order to ease the tariff burden. China has rightly said that its talks with the U.S. reflect mutual agreement, but the talks wouldn’t have happened without the initial waves of Trump tariffs.
These talks and resulting bilateral agreements have benefited U.S. interests by providing much better U.S. access to foreign markets, large actual and promised investments in the United States, large purchases of U.S. advanced manufactured goods and natural resources, and commitments to assist the lagging U.S. shipbuilding industry. These benefits come along with substantially increased U.S. government revenue resulting from the increased tariffs. The revenue benefits the Trump government by helping to pay for the growing U.S. government spending deficit exacerbated by the passage into law in July 2025 of the massive tax cuts and appropriations seen in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was a top priority of the Trump government. Experts critical of tariffs, however, see such benefits offset by reduced U.S. economic growth caused by the tariffs.
Meanwhile, once the Trump government makes clear its demands that allies and partners increase defense spending and share more of the costs of U.S. forces in the region, those payments will be of significant benefit to the United States.
Trump’s success in highlighting the importance of access to the U.S. market also has worked to U.S. advantage in competition with China, which heretofore had the image as the region’s undisputed dominant economic leader. Today, the U.S. economy is a lot more prominent in the calculations of regional businesses, governments, and expert commentators. And China is comparatively less important, especially as a consumer of regional exports.
For one thing, much of China’s imports of regional goods are inputs used in the production of completed manufactured goods for export to foreign markets, notably the United States. U.S. tariffs reducing such Chinese imports are likely to have a direct negative impact on the regional suppliers, highlighting their awareness that the United States may be as important as China in such transactions. More importantly, China’s weakness as a consumer of regional goods reflects stalled Chinese consumer spending amid widespread angst caused by lost equity in the fraught real estate market, continued weak government support programs for a rapidly aging society, and consistently low interest payments on public savings accounts in Chinese banks.
Making matters much worse for regional exporters, Beijing is in the midst of a major campaign promoting exports of Chinese manufactured goods in order to meet overall economic growth targets. As a result, regional and other foreign leaders and exporters restricted from U.S. markets find that other world markets, including their own country markets, are often flooded with Chinese exports.
Many regional governments also are well aware that Chinese manufactured goods exported abroad are the result of strong protectionism, government support, and heavy subsidies to produce high quality products at prices undercutting foreign competitors, including those in the Indo-Pacific. A bottom line in the calculus of Indo-Pacific and other foreign exporters is that China does not offer an alternative market for the goods they previously sold to the United States. Rather, making matters worse for them, Beijing is pressing ahead with selling the products it previously sold to the United States to foreign markets in acute competition with other foreign exporters in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.
Finally, as noted, the fact remains that for all the disruption and regional anxiety promoted by Trump policies, there has as yet been no discernible regional shift against the United States and favoring China. An important reason for this stasis is Chinese behavior. U.S. allies and partners have increasingly aligned with the United States because they all have had very negative experiences with Xi Jinping’s government applying pressures to force them to accommodate Chinese preferences.
For many, the U.S. alliance and/or support are essential to preserving their vital interests in the face of Beijing’s pressure tactics. And these governments have found that despite friendly words and posturing, China remains unflinching in pursuing its ambitions at their expense. In interview after interview, regional officials and opinion leaders told me that they look in vain for Chinese actions, not words, that would show accommodation of their differences with China.
Privately, Chinese officials acknowledge Beijing’s wariness in the face of Indo-Pacific governments aligned with the United States that are now seeking better ties with China in reaction to Trump affronts. They judge these states tended to “swing” in the past toward Washington, and may be recently shifting toward China, but they could easily shift back to the United States, to China’s detriment.
Setbacks for U.S. Influence
While some Trump policies are strengthening U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific in its competition with China, the damage to U.S. influence caused mainly by the negative impact of Trump policies in the region is more substantial. For starters, only two Indo-Pacific governments, the Philippines and Pakistan, have been publicly enthusiastic about U.S. policy under Trump 2.0. Cambodian leaders have also shown enthusiasm for Trump policies, but skeptics see this as an insincere tactic by a very pro-China, one-party government using well controlled leaders and public outlets to manipulate Trump to favor Cambodia. Much more common in the region are regional governments grudgingly dealing pragmatically with adverse Trump government initiatives in ways that strive as much as possible to reduce costs for them and preserve their interests.
Other evidence of declining U.S. influence includes the sharp criticisms of Trump policies that are evident in waves of regional media coverage, opinion pieces, surveys, and interviews with regional officials. As noted, Trump’s proposed 100 percent tariff increase on Chinese imports would, if implemented, strongly reinforce this negative trend for U.S. regional influence. Private interviews with experts from Japan, Australia, and other countries close to and dependent on the United States revealed a common judgment that Trump is in the process of weakening the United States in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere through poorly considered and implemented policies with inadequate consideration of their consequences, making them subject to reversal.
A commonly cited example was Trump’s initial controversial outreach to Russia in seeking a settlement of the Ukraine war, which was eventually reversed in favor of a tougher posture toward Putin, only to be seemingly reversed again in the Putin-Trump summit in August, and reversed again in September. Another example discussed in expert interviews was the abrupt announcement of world wide tariffs in April, which quickly escalated to a trade war with China before serious turbulence in international financial markets caused Trump to pause the tariffs and call for talks.
Experts from Australia and Japan pointed out that their countries’ security and prosperity in the face of Chinese challenges has depended heavily on their alliance or close relationship with the United States, and Trump’s actions have been compromising U.S. power and influence needed to counter Chinese pressures.
As noted, the tariff negotiations have been full of hard choices for regional governments. These unequal talks, which cast the other party as the supplicant to the United States, build widespread alienation and resentment by these governments, friends and foes alike, in their overall grudging accommodation of Trump’s demands.
For allies and partners – notably Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore – the general unease is accompanied by alienation caused by the U.S. government putting aside previously negotiated trade and economic agreements in imposing tariffs. This underscores the administration’s low priority to international commitments in a rules-based order where U.S. partners can count on the United States meeting its agreed upon obligations. And some targeted countries, like Australia, already run large trade deficits with the United States.
Moreover, the Trump government tariffs make little distinction between allies and partners versus opponents or those countries more aligned with China. India has been singled out by Trump for harsh criticism and massive tariffs, despite close ties with the first Trump administration in line with a longstanding U.S. policy to support India as a counterweight to China. The treatment contrasts with the Trump government rapidly advancing ties in a reset of relations with Pakistan, India’s longstanding regional rival strongly aligned with and supported by China.
Singapore is not alone in complaining of the adverse impact the Trump government’s disregard for past commitments in support of a rules-based order has had on its security and prosperity. Meanwhile, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and others anticipate soon more hard choices in the future amid U.S. demands for them to do more on defense spending, burden sharing, and military alignment with the U.S. with a focus on China.
The overall judgment that Trump policies have not led to a discernible regional shift against the United States and favoring China does not disguise the fact that regional governments disagree with Trump administration judgments of fairness in trade relations and defense matters. Rather, Indo-Pacific governments have been compelled to accommodate Trump, as U.S. allies and partners in particular seek to preserve their alliances with the United States amid major dangers from China, and in some cases, North Korea. However, serious alienation of these governments from the Trump government has occurred. One result is these allies and partners and others are much less enthusiastic in support for the U.S.-led efforts targeting China than seen during the Biden government.
It is important to add that a number Indo-Pacific countries have not experienced strong negative pressure from Beijing and can benefit by positioning themselves in China’s sphere of influence with a subservient role in China-focused production chains. Important examples are Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji. China is steady and consistent in pursuing its advantage, which in the case of these countries can be seen more positively than the Trump government’s erratic changes and unilateral imposition of new policies adverse to regional countries.
Conclusion
In sum, under the second Trump administration, China overall is in a better position to spread its influence in competition with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Most immediately, China will gain relative influence as U.S. allies and partners alienated by Trump administration demands adverse to their interests will be less likely to collaborate enthusiastically in efforts to counter Chinese challenges. Instead, the U.S. is increasingly seen as a domineering superpower, with its leader exerting extraordinary power in unpredictable ways that are often adverse to other states’ interests.