As the world awaits the outcome of one of the most unusual presidential elections in US history, many Indo-Pacific countries see relatively little difference whether Vice-President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump wins, analysts and former officials said.
While there may be notable stylistic disparities between the Republican Trump and Democrat Harris, many US policies toward the region are baked in, they note – making the winner relatively less consequential for their core interests.
“The most important thing for Japan about the presidential election is how the new president will treat the relationship with China. If we view it from that aspect, there’s no significant difference,” said Takemasa Sekine, a professor at Yokohama National University.
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“We expect that any candidate, even Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris, would take a very harsh policy towards China.”
Others, offering views from various Asian economies, broadly agreed.
Gita Wirjawan, a former Indonesian trade minister, contended that most Southeast Asian countries are indifferent, adding that what the region really needed was investment and structural reform, neither of which are dependent on the election outcome.
“I think Indonesia’s [regional] leadership is way overdue,” Wirjawan, now chairman of the Jakarta-based Ancora Group, said. “I think Indonesia would provide a balancing tone under either administration.
“The most important thing structurally is for Southeast Asia to get its act together on rule of law.”
On the mind of several US allies and partners – including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines – is pressure they might face during any second Trump administration to pay more for the cost of their defence, as seen during his first term from 2017 to 2021.
South Korea has indicated no official inclination in Tuesday’s electoral showdown. But domestic debate there suggests a preference for Harris given her expected support for alliance stability, multilateral diplomacy and more predictable trade relations in support of regional stability, said Seong-Hyon Lee, an associate at the Harvard University Asia Centre.
Trump, he said, would be likely to spur “tensions over cost-sharing and unpredictability”.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s government aligned closely with Washington during the Biden administration in the face of growing US-China rivalry, and took political flak for improving ties with Japan, its former coloniser.
“South Korea’s Yoon administration is therefore apprehensive about the return of Trump, who is likely to take alliance policy steps nearly opposite to Biden’s, potentially undoing the recent strengthening of alliance networks,” Lee said.
“Economically, while both candidates lean towards protectionism, Harris’s approach is expected to be less disruptive, offering a more predictable trade environment,” said Lee added, while her expected “measured approach to China would help South Korea manage its strategic balance between Washington and Beijing”.
A key concern for many Asian economies remains access to US markets, but again, there may be fewer differences between the two candidates than it appears despite Trump’s avowed passion for tariffs, some said.
“Some people might say, there’s no significant difference,” Lee said. “Even under a Harris administration, we might expect that she would introduce many protective measures.”
As Taipei considers the post-election outlook, the jury is out on who it prefers, said Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington.
Given Trump’s tendency to disregard convention, he might be willing to expand the range of US weapons sold to the self-governing island since it’s paying for them, Hsiao said.
But Hsiao noted, given his transactional nature and admiration for authoritarian leaders, Trump would also be less likely to state explicitly that the US would come to Taiwan’s defence if attacked by China, as Biden has done repeatedly.
“This could potentially fan the flames of scepticism already evident on the democratic island towards US intent, at a time when Chinese Communist Party disinformation is aimed at undermining US credibility,” Hsiao said.
On the other side of the ledger, Harris would probably continue Biden’s bid to “responsibly manage” US-China competition, support human rights and foster alliances, he said.
That could mean she might pursue gradual progress toward a US-Taiwan trade initiative and remain “hyper-focused” on ensuring that Taiwan fully adopts an asymmetric military strategy.
“Unlike Biden, however, Harris has not directly commented on whether she would intervene in the event of a military conflict over Taiwan, although she has stated that the United States will continue to support Taiwan’s ability to defend itself,” he noted.
Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province, to be united with the mainland eventually, by force if necessary.
Few countries, including the US, recognise the island as an independent state. But Washington is legally bound to support Taiwan’s military defence capability, a policy Beijing strongly opposes.
Wirjawan said that many in Southeast Asia believe Republican leadership is easier to read, more straightforward and more transactional, compared to Democrats who are “a little too intellectually charged”.
“The only guys that understand the way Democrats talk would be the Singaporeans,” he told the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“If a Trump presidency comes about, I would predict some leaderships in Southeast Asia would actually be celebrating because they can deal with this guy.”
North Korea, meanwhile, would appear to cautiously favour a Trump win; there is his relationship with its leader Kim Jong-un, his sceptical view of maintaining US troop bases on the Korean peninsula and his transactional approach to alliances.
Following up on that record could weaken US-South Korea ties, said Lee, also a senior fellow with the George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.
“Additionally, Trump’s unpredictability, while risky, has sometimes worked to North Korea’s advantage, creating unexpected openings,” he noted.
“His greater willingness to consider sanctions relief, albeit tied to specific concessions, may also make him more appealing to North Korea, compared to Harris’s likely stricter stance.”
Finally, as the US and China wrangle over everything from security and diplomacy to technology and trade, Beijing is watching the results with particular interest.
China’s preference, of course, has been widely debated in Washington. Some speculate that Beijing favours Trump since his tariffs and distrust of allies could weaken the US globally; others argue that stability-obsessed China above all favours consistency – and thus Harris.
China has long repeated its position: it has no opinion, US elections are a domestic concern and it does not interfere in other nation’s affairs. The election for Beijing, Fudan University professor Zhao Minghao has argued repeatedly, represents a choice between “two bowls of poison”.
But analysts said that China is hardly without a view, however unspoken.
“To cut to the chase, a Democratic Party president is handily the ‘lesser of two evils’ insofar as the party and government are concerned,” said Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington.
China’s ideal choice would be a second term for President Joe Biden, he argued, given the current uneasy bilateral understanding over Taiwan and the importance of putting a floor, however wobbly, under dismal US-China relations.
Since Biden’s withdrawal made that moot, Harris, his vice-president, is a good bet to follow suit.
Gupta ran through what he saw as the Beijing leadership’s thought process.
Harris has said relatively little about China, but by China’s reading that is positive. “She could have excitably injected China into the national conversation to score cheap political points but chose not to,” he said.
Beijing, meanwhile, has changed its mind since Trump was elected in 2016, when it thought that while the brash, mercurial property developer might undercut US-China relations, he would damage Washington’s global reputation even more.
In fact the opposite occurred, Gupta said. Guardrails supporting the US alliance and global multilateral system proved “robust enough to absorb Trump’s punches” while those underpinning the US-China relationship did not.
“US-China relations, on the other hand, could buckle beyond repair” during a second Trump administration, he said.
“Beijing is not keen on a second edition of a ‘Trump and sowing chaos’ experiment.”
Chinese officials may believe he could be “managed” – despite his anti-China rhetoric, Trump announced in July that President Xi Jinping wrote him a “beautiful note” after the July assassination attempt against him – but are hugely wary of his advisers, Gupta said.
“The senior Republican political appointees in Trump II are expected to be irredeemably hostile to China,” he added.
Gong also argued that Beijing is concerned Trump could summarily end the Ukraine war by halting US support for Kyiv – allowing Washington to complete its “pivot to Asia” and take China head on.
Another concern, analysts say: if Trump significantly weakens military ties with Japan and South Korea, Tokyo and Seoul could start building their own nuclear arsenals.
While Beijing may have a preferred winner, it is not holding its breath.
“It is important to note that Beijing’s expectations of the next US president are low,” Gupta said. “It hopes but does not expect this trajectory to necessarily change for the better under the next president.”
More from South China Morning Post:
- Taiwan the only issue that can push Washington and Beijing to war, ex-US diplomat says
- China’s forex reserves should move away from US dollar to curb risks: economist Zhang Ming
- US-China confrontation here to stay after election, says influential Beijing commentator
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