ASEAN 2025’s theme of “Inclusivity and Sustainability” is both timely and urgent.
Left untended, that impact may hit this region at considerable costs in ways beyond anyone’s control. Malaysia is therefore planning an Asean-US summit on Washington’s indiscriminate tariffs on US trading partners.
In such times of global trade dislocation, “inclusivity” means all 10 Asean nations coming together as one to press a joint case against spiteful and senseless tariffs.
Asean as Asia’s third-largest economy and the world’s fifth-largest can do no less, and as a comparable economic community may do much more. By 2030, Asean is expected to surpass Japan as Asia’s second-largest economy and the world’s fourth-largest.
Aggregate Asean GDP has averaged 4% over the past decade while the region remains attractive to foreign investment. Three days ago Moscow announced that Asean and Russia are working on enhanced partnerships at multiple levels.
Indonesia is a full BRICS member, Malaysia and Thailand are partner countries, and more Asean members are likely to apply to join BRICS. The Global South that includes Asean and many of its trading partners are on the rise in a broader inclusivity, mainly to defend and advance their shared legitimate interests.
Asean inclusivity also has to mean non-government sectors working together with their governments for productive synergies.
Inclusivity then works with “sustainability” for Asean to take the region further as an Asian growth pole. Robust national development and regional dynamism have to be sustained, and sustainable.
That has been established in institutions like the Asean-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), whose stakeholders come from the region and beyond.
What is not sustainable is the Western alliance as we know it. With the latest US tariffs on Europe and serious differences over Ukraine, a decades-long alliance may unravel like never before.
The 25% US tariffs on Canada and Mexico, although postponed for 30 days, have jolted the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that is barely five years old. The emotional content of alliance relationships is first loosened, before the alliances themselves.
The same applies in Europe, only more so over conflicting conditions for peace in Ukraine as well. The mess spans economic, diplomatic and political disjunctures between all the contending parties.
What remains of the Western alliance, if anything, is increasingly in doubt. This fraying jumble is inevitable for anyone seeking a quick peace in Ukraine, or any peace at all.
Meanwhile new and rising tariffs are ricocheting off trade partners, friends and allies worldwide – even some half-dozen US states trading abroad – as collateral damage. “Tariff king” India, Japan, Britain and Israel will be hit as well.
The White House argues tariffs will boost the economy, create jobs, lower prices, stop illegal immigrants and halt drug trafficking. Tariffs could almost reverse global warming too, only that climate change mitigation is not a prioritiy.
Tariffs will also hit US consumers – hard. The Petersen Institute for International Economics says lower income households would be struck hardest because they spend proportionately more on targeted basic goods like fuel, food and medication.
Middle-income groups would spend less, which often means doing without what has let them live “in the manner to which they have become accustomed.” In practice that means having poorer lifestyles.
However, all that is based on the assumption that the tariffs would last four years. Since the incongruities are too obvious to be missed, there is reason to suspect they are more disposable ballast than punitive measures.
The tariffs appear to operate as bargaining chips for a transactional Trump. They could be meant to last no longer than as currency in exchange for certain demands.
That is clear with the tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China: stop the inflows of illegal migrants and fentanyl – or else. The same concerns Chinese automobiles: hire American workers in US factories, or face steep tariffs as imports.
This approach also has a history. After Trump 1.0 placed sanctions on China in 2018, within a year China was in talks with Trump for the Phase One trade deal.
That deal was signed in January 2020 to begin lifting those sanctions. Ending the Ukraine proxy war will be much tougher, with the proxy now thinking it is a principal.
If implemented, the tariffs could have a shelf life until mid-term, or the fourth quarter of next year. The costs at home would simply be too high.
Whether Asean participants at the coming summit play card games or not, this is high-stakes poker. It is less a game of chance because it requires skill and nerve.
But for Trump 2.0, it is still a gamble because the other players may just call its bluff. Then all bets could be off.
Bunn Nagara is Director and Senior Fellow of BRI Caucus (Asia-Pacific), and Honorary Fellow at the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
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