Trump's Tariffs Are a Recipe for Strategic Failure in Asia

US May Have Handed China an Opening for Greater Engagement in the Region

- Bhagyashree Garekar

As the beauty of spring unfolded around him in the Rose Garden adjacent to the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump told the world exactly how he intends to pursue big returns from trade on his way to restoring the lost glories of American manufacturing.

He said he would undo historical wrongs by levying a flat 10 per cent tariff on all wanting a piece of the world's largest market and far bigger bites from trading partners who commit a "Trumpian" sin and run up large trade surpluses.

A few hours after his April 2 reveal, as the world scrambled to make sense of his grand tariff strategy, he declared success.

"The operation is over! The patient lived, and is healing. The prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger, bigger, better, and more resilient than ever before," said Mr Trump, in his characteristic all-caps posting on Truth Social.

Just one piece is missing in this most ambitious policy to date, say US-based analysts: a geopolitical strategy, including, crucially, for Asia.

"There is no message," said veteran Asia watcher Bonnie Glaser flatly, when asked to delve into the bottom line of the unexpectedly wide range in tariffs aimed at nations in Asia.

Likewise at the American Enterprise Institute, Dr Zack Cooper shrugged. "I don't think there is a geopolitical strategy here," he said, responding to a question about how the tariffs were going to help create outcomes that the US seeks in the Indo-Pacific.

Specifically, can Washington get any good out of this in the part of the world which it often declares as its most important theatre for foreign and military policy?

"President Trump appears to think that economics is separate from geopolitics, and that economics is much more important than geopolitics," said Dr Cooper, who studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and US-China competition.