President Donald Trump departs Friday on the riskiest foreign trip of his second term.
Unlike his highly choreographed foreign trips to Europe and the Middle East, where leaders were eager to fête the president, his weeklong trip through Asia is replete with potential pitfalls. An anticipated meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea could defuse yet another economy-roiling trade war between the two nations, but the outcome — or whether the meeting will even take place — is far from certain.
Trump could return celebrating deals that will strengthen U.S. ties in the region — or, if talks with Xi collapse, confronting an escalating trade war likely to rattle markets, ripple through supply chains and expose how dependent the U.S. remains on China for critical minerals. The White House has said the two leaders will meet Thursday, but China has yet to confirm the meeting.
“This is one of the riskiest trips any president of the United States has taken,” said Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist. “The Chinese Communist Party has declared open economic warfare against America, so this is what they call a throw of the ‘iron dice.’ This is as high stakes as it gets.”
But China isn’t the only potential trouble spot.
Malaysia, which is hosting one of the two summits Trump will attend, is trying to drum up a peace ceremony for the president to preside over between Cambodia and Thailand. But the two countries haven’t resolved the simmering border dispute that boiled over into intense fighting in July, and Beijing’s role in supplying the weaponry that Phnom Penh deployed in that conflict has heightened tensions.
Trump is also eager to solidify investment pledges from South Korea and Japan even as South Korea is still negotiating its $350 billion pledge and Japan’s new prime minister has threatened to pull out of their deal with the U.S., which includes a $550 billion investment package, if she feels it is unfair.
An administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the Asia trip, rebuffed the notion that there is anything uncertain about it.
“President Trump doesn’t travel to have dialogue for dialogue’s sake. He is going to Asia to close major trade deals, secure huge investments, and dramatically advance peace and security in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said. “The unprecedented results will speak for themselves.”
Trump has spent the week raising expectations for success, telegraphing certainty that not only will a meeting with Xi happen in South Korea, but that he will leave it with a “really fair and really great trade deal.”
The tangled geopolitics underscore the gamble Trump is taking, with the potential meeting with Xi the biggest bet he’s hoping pays off.
The precarious trip follows what may have been Trump’s best foreign policy week of his second term. After riding high from securing a peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, Trump finds himself in a very different place: Peace in the Middle East is tenuous; a second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has been scuttled; and tensions with China are at their highest point in months.
To notch a win, Trump needs Xi to back away from some of his recent escalatory actions, like sweeping restrictions on products that have even trace amounts of Chinese rare earths in them. The president is also looking to lock down new trade deals from key economies in Asia, some of which are in the midst of major conflicts. The move revives an earlier strategy to draw regional economies out of China’s orbit through alternative trade arrangements as conflict in the region deepens.
“It’s critical to the strategy, which is essentially to isolate China,” said Kate Kalutkiewicz, a veteran trade lobbyist who served as a top adviser to Trump during his first administration. “It is likely that we will see other deals announced before the meeting with Xi and Trump, precisely because they want to show that the United States has other options here.”
The president has often declared total victory even before the details are worked out and some close to the White House expect he will do so again after meeting Xi, framing even a modest deescalation of the trade war with China as an unqualified victory.
But that may be harder to believe if he’s unable to extract significant concessions. Farm-state Republicans, spurred by soybean farmers angry over lost exports, are openly criticizing the administration and pushing for it to open China back up to farmers. That pressure is piling on to the existing complaints from businesses, particularly retailers dependent on Chinese imports, who are entering the all-important holiday season facing higher prices due to the tariffs.
In the days leading up to his departure, Trump has touted his “great relationship” with Xi and dismissed the chokehold that China has on the U.S. when it comes to the production and processing of rare earth minerals, which are critical to manufacturing everything from iPhones to fighter-jet sensors.
“I think we’re going to have a very good relationship with China,” Trump told reporters. “When we finish our meetings in South Korea, China and I will have a really fair and really great trade deal together.”
China experts expect Trump and Xi to lower tensions enough to meet in South Korea, especially with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer set to meet with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng in Malaysia on Saturday and Sunday.
But many remain doubtful that the White House will make any substantial progress on the overarching relationship with China, beyond pressing the reset button.
“You get Trump and Xi on the stage together saying we don’t have any problems with each other for a while. That’s really the outcome that people are looking for,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank, who focuses on U.S.-China relations.
And some China hawks fear Trump will be so desperate to get China to resume its purchases of soybeans and ease the rare earth restrictions that he might make concessions he otherwise wouldn’t, like removing export controls on chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment and walking back investment restrictions aimed at curtailing the flow of advanced technologies overseas.
“The worst case scenario for the United States is Trump concedes a whole lot,” said Liza Tobin, who served as National Security Council director for China during the first Trump administration and the start of the Biden administration.
Navigating the encounter with Xi in South Korea is, by far, the most perilous part of Trump’s trip but the other stops present their own challenges. South Korea and Japan, whose leaders Trump is slated to meet with during his trip, both may look to renegotiate trade agreements that Trump has touted to domestic audiences.
South Korea, still hashing out a trade pact, has chafed at the idea of turning over $350 billion in government funds to invest in projects largely chosen by the U.S. Seoul has argued such a structure would leave the country in a financial crisis and has pushed for flexibility in how that $350 billion is funded.
Seoul also wants relief for its auto industry, which faces a 25 percent tariff while auto companies in the EU, U.K. and Japan have a lower rate, and has floated redirecting money to struggling Korean firms if talks stall, according to Tami Overby, a partner at DGA Group Government Relations who focuses on South Korea.
“They can’t take a bad deal,” Overby said, noting that newly-elected President Lee Jae Myung faces an opposition eager to pounce. “A good, fair, balanced deal is good for both countries.”
Trump also faces potential pushback in Tokyo if he pressures Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to provide details on how she’ll deliver on the $550 billion in investments in U.S. projects that her predecessor, former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, committed to in June.
Takaichi walked back her warning last month that she would consider reopening negotiations if she felt that deal was unfair. But she risks a collapse of the fragile coalition she finalized Monday if she makes concessions to Trump that political rivals can brand as economically harmful.
Few are looking for confrontation with the mercurial American president, and Southeast Asian countries are expected to use next week’s ASEAN summit in Malaysia to demonstrate their alignment with Trump’s trade agenda, even as they hedge against his volatility.
But new deals won’t erase the resentment from Trump’s tariff wars, which have pounded export-oriented manufacturers across Southeast Asia. ASEAN nations remain tied to Beijing, which has expanded its regional trade zone and digital infrastructure projects even as it makes increasingly aggressive incursions into the South China Sea.
“As the U.S., when you negotiate with other parties, how this negotiation is going to affect China or help you to insulate yourself from China’s actions is always in the back of the mind,” said Greta Peisch, who was general counsel at the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office during the Biden administration. “With this administration, given the recent escalatory actions, that will be even more so.”
U.S. officials say they’re close to a trade deal with Cambodia, which has embraced Trump’s intervention in its border dispute with Thailand — nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. But Thailand has mostly rejected outside intervention and outlined a series of conditions Cambodia must agree to before it pulls back troops.
Trump has conditioned his attendance at the ASEAN meeting on presiding over a ceremonial peace signing between Cambodia and Thailand, yet his push has stalled. Letters to both Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul have failed to move the needle much.
“The prospects are 50-50” for an agreement in time for the ASEAN meeting, Thai Defense Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit said Tuesday per the Thai publication The Nation.
Doug Palmer contributed to this report.
