U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs — especially the ultrahigh “reciprocal tariffs” that he says will be reintroduced on July 8 for any country that has not struck a trade deal with his administration — have sent countries around the world scrambling to respond, adapt and limit the fallout. ASEAN’s 10 members — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — have been among the most proactive.
Their leaders quickly recognized that, after decades of spectacular gross domestic product growth, ASEAN is an economic force that the Trump administration would have to reckon with in a serious way. In 2000, Japan was the world’s second-largest economy, some eight times larger than ASEAN; today, it is only 1.1 times larger, and by 2030, ASEAN’s economy will overtake it. In 2010-20, ASEAN contributed more to global economic growth than the European Union did.
ASEAN owes much of this progress to open trade. Between 2003 and 2023, its trade with the rest of the world exploded, from $618 billion to $2.8 trillion. But the real secret to ASEAN’s success is strong and competent leadership, exemplified, in the grouping’s early years, by Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a Cambridge-educated lawyer, and Indonesian President Suharto, a Javanese military leader and mystic. It was their unlikely partnership that kept ASEAN together.
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