The potential return of Donald Trump to the White House has raised eyebrows in Asia, with some experts and former officials suggesting that a victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election could see Trump’s more destructive impulses unleashed on the region.
If American voters in November again choose Trump, who is the heavy favorite to win the Republican nomination, the decision will have potentially serious implications for Japan, which lost its most effective “Trump whisperer” with the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.
“A return to the White House by Donald Trump would have adverse and destabilizing effects on the Indo-Pacific region and on U.S. interests there,” said Daniel Russel, who was the assistant secretary of state for East Asia under President Barack Obama.
While incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden has prioritized shoring up alliances and forging new partnerships in the region, Trump has a long history of disparaging allies, including Japan, and taking a transactional approach to dealing with them.
What’s more, a second-term Trump would have a better grasp of the executive branch’s bureaucratic machinery than he did in 2017, his first year in office. The guardrails that partially thwarted his more authoritarian tendencies in his first term — Congress, the civil and foreign service, his own staffers — have also steadily eroded, Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, wrote recently.
The former president’s allies are even beginning to pre-screen the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, part of an unprecedented move to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024, Axios reported last month.
Under such a scenario, observers say it would be unlikely that the government’s national security and economic agencies would be able to function normally or resist problematic or illegal White House orders as they did during Trump’s first term.
“This suggests that more of the ill-conceived foreign policy, defense, or trade initiatives that Trump was talked out of or that were never implemented might come roaring back,” said Russel.
“The era of Trump whisperers is over, and an emboldened Trump seems likely to be even less inhibited and even less open to reason than in the past,” he added.
Angst in Tokyo
In particular, Trump’s entrenched views of Japan — some of his earliest remarks on foreign policy issues were focused on the country — could signal that Tokyo may be in for a headache if he is elected again.
As a businessman, he repeatedly heaped criticism on Japan in the 1980s as its economy and global influence surged. In interviews, newspaper ads and soundbites, he singled out the Asian powerhouse for “taking advantage of the United States” by getting rich and not paying Washington enough for assisting with its defense.
But even as Japan’s economy slowed and its clout on the global stage diminished, Trump’s views of the country lingered.
During his 2016 campaign — and even well into his time in office — he continued to lambast the U.S.-Japan alliance as unfair, saying that Japan wouldn't have to help the U.S. if it were attacked, though Washington would be required to come to Tokyo's aid.
"If Japan is attacked, we will fight World War III," he said in a 2019 interview. "We will go in and protect them with our lives and with our treasure. But if we're attacked, Japan doesn't have to help us. They can watch it on a Sony television."
Those remarks echoed similar ones three years earlier, when he said he had been told Japan pays “50% of the cost” of basing U.S. troops in Japan and asked pointedly: “Why don’t they pay 100%?”
During his time in the White House, Trump allegedly demanded that Japan pay $8 billion per year for hosting American troops — or risk their withdrawal — one of his former national security advisers, John Bolton, wrote in his memoir. The demand led to an impasse that was only resolved under Biden, when the allies agreed to a roughly 5% increase in Japan’s payout over a five-year period starting in fiscal 2022.
At the time, some experts and Japanese officials said that Trump may have intentionally been using his criticism of Japan-U.S. military arrangements as leverage in trade negotiations. Indeed, Trump was widely seen as the winner in talks for a 2019 trade deal sealed by the two countries, though Abe — largely thanks to his rapport with Trump — did manage to avoid the imposition of additional tariffs on Japanese automobiles.
Would Trump again pursue similar measures in a second term?
The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment by The Japan Times.
But on trade, he has said he would kill Biden’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework — a poor man’s substitute for the first Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that Trump withdrew from in 2017 — and pledged to push for a “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act” that would give him authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any country that imposes one on the U.S.
Kenneth Weinstein, Trump’s nominee in 2020 to be U.S. ambassador to Tokyo and currently the Japan Chair at the Hudson Institute think tank, hinted that the former president would not back down.
“Just as President Trump will seek parity on Japan’s contributions to its own national security, so he will seek greater parity on trade, including in the automobile sector,” Weinstein said, while also noting both Trump and Tokyo’s skepticism of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which has put Japanese electric vehicles at a disadvantage.
“U.S. allies and rivals will not like reciprocal tariffs being put in place but, unlike President Trump’s first term, they will understand that he isn’t bluffing with these policies and that his concerns need to be met,” he added.
Heavyweights in the Japanese business community have voiced concern over such policies.
“We feel that former President Trump is characterized by his ‘America First’ policy and that he sees things in terms of whether he can treat them as bargaining chips, so there is a possibility that he will make decisions in diplomacy and other areas that are not bound by conventional wisdom,” Fumiya Kokubun, chairman of the Japan Foreign Trade Council, told a news conference in late November.
“Many people are of the opinion that it’s necessary to conduct simulations in advance in case the former president is re-elected.”
Japan’s strategy
But much has changed in the U.S.-Japan relationship over the last seven years, including moves to bolster the alliance that some say should at least be partially credited to the Trump White House.
“Japan became America’s most important ally in the Trump administration and not simply because of the incredibly close friendship and partnership between Prime Minister Abe and President Trump,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein said the two allies deepened strategic convergence, with the U.S. adopting the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” approach as its strategic vision for the region, while Japan became more engaged on security issues. “The Quad” grouping was resuscitated and Tokyo followed Washington’s lead in “becoming serious about economic security.”
Just over a year ago, Japan laid the foundation for the country’s defense and security policies for years to come with three new security documents that signaled Tokyo’s readiness to shed some of the postwar constraints on its military.
This shift has included a five-year, ¥43 trillion budget plan that started in fiscal 2023 to fundamentally revamp the country's defense posture, as well as the development of its own "counterstrike capabilities" that will enable Tokyo to destroy targets in enemy territory.
This could help diminish any potential criticism from a second Trump administration.
“The more Japan does for its own security, including by raising defense spending by 60%, the less significant, in my opinion, the issue of host nation support becomes,” said Weinstein.
And while much of the momentum for these changes had been set in motion before Trump, he could claim credit for nudging the process along. Such a move would help diminish Trump’s criticism that Japan is not doing enough to defend itself — especially if properly harnessed by Tokyo, according to Jeffrey Hornung, a Japan expert and political scientist with the Rand Corp.
“Regardless of Japan’s prime minister, if Tokyo moves early on to set a new baseline for the former president that characterizes a more proactive Japan that has been increasing its defense spending; increasing its security assistance in the region; paying more for the alliance, and buying more U.S. equipment, it could be enough to make (Trump) believe that Japan is doing what needs to be done as his administration gets started anew,” Hornung said.
“The more Japanese officials pitch those actions in a way to give him credit, the more positive it will be for the alliance.”
The two Koreas
But if Trump wins, he may set his sights first on the Korean Peninsula, attempting to broker a deal — and another high-profile summit — with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
He is reportedly considering a plan to let Pyongyang keep its nuclear weapons while offering the Kim regime financial incentives to stop making new bombs. Though he called the report “disinformation,” such a deal, or one involving a peace declaration formally ending the Korean War and halting joint military exercises with South Korea, are within the realm of possibility, given his relationship with Kim and disdain for the drills, which he has derisively referred to as pricey “war games.”
An agreement like that would almost certainly deal a devastating blow to the administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has taken a hard-line approach to Pyongyang, and damage the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
“Yoon is very different from his predecessor and has shown less willingness for the type of concessions that a potential Trump administration could make to Pyongyang,” Hornung said. If Washington tried to offer concessions to Pyongyang against the explicit reservations of Seoul, “it would cause tremendous friction” in the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
It would also fuel the argument for South Korea developing its own nuclear arsenal, a move Trump signaled support for during his 2016 presidential campaign when he said, “It’s going to happen anyway.”
However, Scott Snyder, a Koreas expert at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations, stressed in a recent report that new geopolitical realities on the Korean Peninsula since Trump left office — especially those that have resulted from the growing Sino-U.S. rivalry — make a rewind to his first-term policies unlikely.
China hawk
One area of continuity would be Washington’s hard-line policies toward Beijing, which have broad bipartisan support. Biden’s team has taken on many of Trump’s tough — but at times haphazard — China measures, including import tariffs, but the president has also been more strategic in targeting Beijing.
Not one to be outdone, Trump would likely use a second term to take an even stronger stance against China, Weinstein said.
“The second Trump administration will not be a home for the establishment types who sought to oppose President Trump’s harder line on Beijing, either economically or security-wise,” he said.
A top focus will be the fate of democratic Taiwan. China considers the self-ruled island the most sensitive issue facing the Sino-U.S. relationship.
Washington views Taiwan as a key partner and crucial line of defense as the Chinese military continues to punch further into the Western Pacific, threatening U.S. primacy in the area and potentially putting Japan at risk.
In recent years, a handful of top U.S. military officials have assessed that China could attack Taiwan this decade. Xi has instructed the Chinese military to be ready for conflict by 2027, though U.S. officials say this does not mean Beijing will launch a war by then.
Fears of a U.S.-China conflict erupting over the island have surged in recent years, but Weinstein said Trump — who has repeatedly noted that the United States did not enter a war during his term — would be able to deter Chinese leader Xi Jinping from an invasion of Taiwan.
“President Trump, instead, will place maximum emphasis, once again, on deterrence and on building up the U.S. military so that Xi Jinping understands what the cost of armed conflict would be,” he said.
But Russel, the former Obama administration diplomat, said Beijing could be expected to test whether Trump’s “isolationist ‘America First’ impulses mean that he would not feel compelled to protect or defend Taiwan.”
“While Beijing might be reluctant to attempt a military invasion of the island, it would certainly seek to use the perceived unreliability of Trump’s government to coerce Taiwan’s leaders into making major concessions,” Russel said.
Trump’s tendency to go it alone while praising dictators such as Xi and bashing U.S. partners and allies could ultimately end up weakening any beefed-up measures against China.
“One thing China seeks to exploit are divisions between the United States and its allies,” said Hornung. “Beijing will almost assuredly leverage any attempt by President Trump to publicly name and shame treaty allies or fawn over U.S. adversaries.”
This could come in the form of disinformation operations targeted at U.S. friends and allies like Japan, Australia and the Philippines, as well as increased provocative moves in the South and East China Seas.
For the U.S.-Japan relationship, it’s unclear if a return of Trump would be the headache that some envision, Hornung said.
“But it is fair to say that it provides less certainty — and potentially less alignment — than the alliance currently enjoys.”
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