This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 16, 2024 - December 22, 2024

Everything’s Donald Trump these days. Just as he would like it. Seeing him at the recent reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, it looked like there is a certain culture to the man. Yet the picture of him scowling at the Élysée — not in the middle, with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to his left looking meek — perhaps captures a better representation of the next president of the US.

So which Trump can we expect, us minions in the rest of the world, particularly in Asean and the Global South? It is easy to say, both. The question is, more of which? The almost amiable and civilised Trump, or the scowling and bullying one?

First, let us note, he has never had much time for Asean. When president for the first time around he not once attended any of the Asean summits. The nearest he came to doing so was the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2017. That too because he was in the Philippines on an official visit. However, the EAS meeting was delayed by two hours. He skipped it.

It cannot be that he did so out of annoyance alone. In 2020, when the Asean Summits were online (because of Covid-19) he still did not bother to attend.

Trump 2.0 is not likely to be different. We should not hold our breath on his being in Kuala Lumpur next November. He does not much care for multilateral talking shops where he also has to listen to others. He prefers the one-to-one.

It is often said he is transactional. Thus, who does he transact with in Asean, much less the Global South, which he most probably does not recognise at all?

Some would have seen the video on social media of Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto on the phone to US president-elect Donald Trump. Doubtless, as a country Trump would not consider negligible, Indonesia he would deal with. Singapore would also be in the mix — major financial centre, sophisticated port with naval facilities for the US and a hub of an airport — where he had the Singapore Summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in 2018.

The thing is, will they share notes with other Asean countries, in matters of common regional interest?

Most obviously on trade. Trump promises to impose across-the-board tariffs which will affect all Asean countries, especially Vietnam which has the largest surplus with the US. More broadly, an all out US trade war with China is going to affect trade dependent Asean.

Even large Asean countries with big domestic markets, like Indonesia, will be hit by slower global growth, reduced investment flows, inflation and high interest rates. Trump on the romp is not a welcome prospect.

Asean will not be totally helpless. It can engage economically and more vigorously with neglected regions in West Asia, Latin America and Africa, as well as intensify Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership relationships. However they are no substitute for the huge US market.

Adjustment to a smaller global gross domestic product pie will not be easy. New links take time to form. Added to this, the US-China trade war could become something more sinister than just economic. There are any number of geopolitical contestations in the region and beyond which could lead to tension and military conflict. All not conducive to the stable world in which Asean has prospered.

Thus, unity in Asean is essential to minimise the imposition and impact of Trump tariffs, and to forge new economic relationships. All that rhetoric about the whole is greater than the parts will be put to the test. Under Malaysian chairmanship next year, Asean must put on its thinking cap on how to navigate the next four years of Trump.

Even as, individually, Asean states must act in their best interest, the commonality of interests must not be forgotten, whether in moderating Trump’s worst instincts, or in developing new region-to-region arrangements.

Already, Trump has warned he will also impose tariffs on states attempting to develop an alternative currency to the dollar in global trade and finance. The BRICS countries have been discussing something along these lines, but Indian foreign minister Jaishankar has responded that there are no such plans.

Actually there are, driven mainly by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, but they have not quite taken off among the nine BRICS member countries. It is not easy to have a consensus on such an alternative currency, let alone establishing one.

However, many countries in Asean and the Global South (generally the developing and rising states of the world) are forging the use of national currencies in their bilateral trade, to reduce exposure to the US dollar and vagaries of American financial policies.

They should continue to do so. The de-dollarisation process is different from developing a currency to replace the greenback, as arguably the euro could have.

Trump should understand this, especially as he talks so much about America First. Other countries have their interests too. America First cannot become America Only. If Trump goes in that direction, the bifurcation of the world will only be accelerated. It will be America and the rest.

Similarly, Trump should not go gaga with MAGA (Make America Great Again). MAGA is no bad thing if he looks at what’s wrong with America instead of blaming the rest of the world for its own failings and frailties, including the deep divisions in the country’s unending conflict with itself.

Over and above such unresolved divisions, America suffers from a low level of productivity, crumbling infrastructure, unconscionable disparity of income and wealth. None is solved by blaming foreign imports alone, damning illegal immigrants and reducing taxes on corporates and the rich.

The US is at a tipping point just as much as is the world economic and political order as we know it. In his way, Trump will listen to national leaders lining up individually to deal with him, like Macron has done ahead of the European Union, even Prabowo in that telephone call to Trump so widely circulated on social media. But it must always be put to him the importance of converging on common interests.

What is also needed is the engagement of group support and identification of American interests within the group.

Asean particularly, given its more advanced integration and huge growth potential compared to the broad Global South, is in a position to deal with Trump better than being a mere supplicant. It is crucial, therefore, that the regional grouping thinks through how to position itself in dealing with the 47th US President, as well as to have a Plan B.

It is no longer business as usual for the region, the Global South and the world.

Tan Sri Dr Munir Majid is chairman of CARI Asean Research and Advocacy

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