ASEAN on the hot seat in US tariff negotiations

AllAfrica

3 days ago

As the 90-day 'pause' on Donald Trump's 'reciprocal tariffs' nears the finish line, countries across Southeast Asia are growing increasingly anxious that the price for securing a deal to lower those tariffs includes political backlash at home and friction abroad with China, their largest, by far, economic partner.
Views vary across the ten-member Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) on how high a price they are willing to pay, but conversations with government officials in five ASEAN countries over the past month reflected a deep sense of unease with their near-term economic prospects.
Initial optimism that efforts to bring down trade surpluses with the US would suffice to reduce if not eliminate reciprocal tariffs has given way to an uncomfortable awareness that ASEAN finds itself on the frontlines of a US-China rivalry it can do little to shape or avoid, with the lines between trade and geopolitics growing more blurred by the day.
As ASEAN's trade negotiators dig deeper into the fine print of demands emanating from the US Trade Representative (USTR)'s office, it's becoming clearer that the US goal is not merely to secure a larger piece of the Asian economic pie for America but to shrink the size of the pie currently enjoyed by China.
And the gist of Beijing's message to ASEAN capitals is 'negotiate the best deal you can with the US, but don't harm China's interests.' It's not obvious how ASEAN will escape this quandary, and hence the rising sense of disquiet across the region.
The US remains an important export destination for ASEAN, and reduced access to the US market will bring economic pain and job loss, although at varying degrees across the region. Reciprocal tariffs imposed on ASEAN were among the highest in the world, ranging from 10% for Singapore and 17% for the Philippines to 46% for Vietnam and 49% for Cambodia.
Indonesia, with less than 10% of its exports going to the US and having a large domestic consumer market, is relatively less exposed. Vietnam, with a $124 billion trade surplus with the US and $144 billion trade deficit with China in 2024, is at the other end of the spectrum
On July 2, Vietnam agreed to a provisional trade agreement with the US that drops its reciprocal tariff down to 20% for most goods but leaves a 40% tariff in place for goods suspected of being 'transhipped' from China. In exchange, Vietnam will allow tariff-free entry to all imports from the US, according to the US statement announcing the deal.
Virtually all other ASEAN members are still determined to find common ground with the USTR. Most have offered to go on major 'buy US' sprees to bring down their trade surplus with the US, agreeing to source agricultural products like soybeans, wheat and cotton, commercial aircraft, military equipment and oil and gas from the US, even if these cost more than other sources.
Many have offered favorable tariff rates for US imports, preferential treatment for US investors and a reduction or removal of non-tariff barriers such as bureaucratic import licences, local content regulations and other competition-reducing measures, which economists in the region generally agree are steps ASEAN countries should enact anyway.
Some, like Vietnam and Indonesia, have offered to make sizeable investments in the US or give the US access to critical minerals such as nickel and cobalt. Every country has had to commit to tighter enforcement of rules of origin to counter Chinese efforts to avoid various US tariffs and sanctions.
But for teams of ASEAN trade negotiators dispatched to Washington, DC, the process has been bewildering and unsettling. Their three major interlocutors, the USTR, Commerce Department and Treasury Department, make different and sometimes conflicting demands, and ASEAN negotiators struggle to gauge which one of them, if any, really has the wherewithal to convince Trump to sign off on a deal.
Process aside, ASEAN countries worry that the concessions being demanded of them carry hidden and hard-to-quantify costs, but costs all the same. Three are particularly concerning.
The first is that the nature of the talks so far has been less negotiations than sets of one-way demands with no guarantee of sustained tariff relief, even for countries agreeing to all or most of the USTR's demands.
The lack of any clear guarantees of tariff relief exposes ASEAN governments to public backlash at home. Trump bragging about countries 'kissing my ass' to negotiate tariffs, comments which were widely reported across ASEAN, have not helped.
The lack of any clear guarantees of tariff relief exposes ASEAN governments to public backlash at home. Trump bragging about countries 'kissing my ass' to negotiate tariffs, comments which were widely reported across ASEAN, have not helped.
But relief from the reciprocal tariffs imposed on April 2nd is not the only concern. The US has many other tariffs that could also be imposed, including the so-called Section 232 tariffs which can be imposed on imports that 'threaten to impair' US national security.
Section 232 tariffs already apply to autos, aluminium and steel, and new Section 232 tariffs are being considered for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, commercial trucks and critical minerals. The US has made no commitments that any relief from 'reciprocal tariffs' will also apply to Section 232 tariffs.
A second concern is the extent to which concessions made to Washington further erode the integrity of the global trading system that has enabled ASEAN countries to grow so rapidly in recent decades.
Every concession that gives preference to US goods over those from other countries undermines the 'most favored nation' principle, which is a core bedrock of international trade. The MFN principle mandates that countries treat all their trading partners equally and specifically prevents a country from offering preferential treatment to one trading partner over another.
Third, and most consequentially, the negotiations with Washington are putting ASEAN countries on a collision course with China, which is the top trading partner for the region. The USTR's default list of demands include a set of 'economic security' commitments.
One such commitment allows for a reduction of reciprocal tariffs only for goods for which 'Chinese content' – including imports of raw and intermediate materials from China – is no more than 10-20% of the value of the exported good.
Similar commitments are being sought for goods exported from companies in which Chinese investors hold significant stakes. ASEAN countries are also facing demands to comply with any future sanctions or trading restrictions the US applies to China.
To what extent these 'economic security' commitments were in the Vietnam deal agreed to on July 2 is not yet clear. Nor is China's response.
Adam Schwarz is CEO of Asia Group Advisors, an Access Partnership company. AGA is a public affairs and advisory consultancy focusing on Southeast Asia .