Asia preparing for unpredictable Trump and Vance to win US election, experts say

Former President Donald Trump upended the election tradition of “balancing the ticket” when he picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. But the MAGA pair is unlikely to disrupt the calculus for an Asia that’s already preparing for the possibility of his victory in November, experts say.

Vance, a former Trump critic turned MAGA stalwart, has voiced foreign policy views in lockstep with Trump. Both men support wide tariffs on China and have criticised US aid to Ukraine.

Yet three Asia-Pacific experts said that regional leaders – having learned from Trump’s shock win in 2016 and his subsequent unpredictability – are already laying the groundwork for a scenario where he wins.

“It would be quite irresponsible if they didn’t already countenance this, and I think, to be honest, we will not see the overreactions that we saw earlier or in parts of Europe,” said Dylan Loh, assistant professor of public policy and international studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Trump previously reneged on deals he felt were disadvantageous to the US and pressured allies like Japan and South Korea to support US defence costs.

But Loh believes regional stability will prevail.

“I think Trump’s tenure has shown that fears of abandonment or ignorance of politics in Asia are overblown,” he said.

The most prominent US-aligned governments in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines have been hedging their bets and working carefully to make their economies and supply chains more resilient, said Chong Ja Ian, a political-science professor at the National University of Singapore.

“Other Southeast Asian states seem to believe they can weather another Trump administration, perhaps by freezing on the efforts of the