In Confronting China, The West Needs Partners in Southeast Asia
Leaders from Southeast Asia are to meet in Manila on November 10 for the ASEAN summit, the same date on which the China-U.S. trade truce was set to expire. The September 24 summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump was widely characterized as heavy on pomp and light on substance but delivered more time. ASEAN and China have been each other’s largest trading partner since 2020, and Southeast Asian countries have come to rely heavily on China as a provider of intermediate goods.
Why it matters: The trade theme is central: Western efforts to confront China’s trading practices must not come at the cost of economic partnerships with Southeast Asian countries that rely on Chinese intermediate goods.