ASEAN, US, China and geopolitics

The seemingly-endless rivalry between the U.S. and China in the Asia-Pacific Region has placed the 11 member-nations of ASEAN in the vortex of a volatile geopolitics that necessarily impinges on the lives, security, and future of 685 million people in the world's third most populated region.

The ASEAN member nations command a purchasing power parity-adjusted gross domestic product of around 6.3% of the entire global GDP, across a wide spectrum of multiple levels of development. Highly-developed economies are led by Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia followed by emerging economic tigers like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and the less-developed like Laos PDR, Myanmar, Cambodia ,and Timor-Leste.

The US looks at ASEAN as a strategic ally in this region because the 11 member-nations are among America's key economic partners, in fact, ASEAN ranks as the fourth largest trading partner of the U.S. The U.S.-ASEAN trade reached no less than $475 billion in 2024 and by this time, it is estimated at already half a trillion dollars. In 2023 American direct foreign investments in multiple ASEAN countries reached no less than $75 billion. Trump should really come to the 49th ASEAN Summit to explain his unilateral imposition of tariffs which made the 11 member-nations rethink their trade relations with America.

While Trump's unilateral acts of weaponizing tariffs to advance Washington's seemingly interventionist policies under the current Republican government has abruptly and unexpectedly disrupted the supply chain across the Pacific, China has remained for the longest time as ASEAN's biggest trading partner, steady and consistent. China has never weaponized tariffs unilaterally. And so Beijing's continuing expansion of the trading platforms with the 11 member-nations are progressively expanding in scale and scope over time. If the U.S. does not shape up, China will continue to dominate the ASEAN markets.

In the first half of 2025 alone, the total exports and imports between ASEAN and China reached a staggering $430 billion which means by the end of last year, that scale reached more than a trillion dollars already. That was more than 19% increase over the scale a year ago. Manufactured goods commanded 90% of that volume of trade. ASEAN imports from China rose by 65% with three quarters of that volume comprising capital and intermediate goods feeding into the 11 nation's production lines.

This growing China-ASEAN interdependence is creating increasing opportunities for Beijing to heighten its growing influence over ASEAN even as the 11 member-nations also gain work efficiency, higher productivity, and bigger profit margins. It is now becoming increasingly clear that ASEAN sees China as a better trading partner than America under Trump. By November, after the U.S. midterm elections, if the Democrats gain control over the Senate and the House, the Trump policy may be reversed by a Democratic Congress.

The Diplomat, a global paper, reported that this surge also intensifies competitive pressure on local industries: “China’s export share to ASEAN reportedly climbed to 16.4% in 2024 – higher than its export share to the U.S. or the EU – and China now supplies 31.3% of total ASEAN imports. The influx of lower-cost Chinese finished goods is supposedly already reshaping the domestic markets.”

The Diplomat also reported that in Indonesia and Thailand, factory closures and layoffs are increasingly attributed to import competition. The result is a widening tension between regional integration and industrial resilience, one that ASEAN can no longer ignore. After decades of stability and open markets, ASEAN now sits on the fault line of a reshaped global economy, where great-power rivalry increasingly defines the rules.

The Diplomat goes on to say: “Historically, ASEAN has refused to treat the U.S. and China as mutually exclusive partners. But with Washington’s hard line on tariffs and trade policies, Beijing is definitely set to continue – regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat occupies the White House – and China equally unyielding, competition is hardening in an era shaped by robotics, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence. Economic strategy can no longer be separated from geopolitics.”

The bottom line is that China is gaining ground in ASEAN, while the U.S. is busy intervening in other nations' internal conflicts, at times when Americans themselves are facing many serious domestic, socio-economic, and political conflicts.