What Does Asia Think Of Trump 2.0?

If any readers travel to Singapore, I can recommend they visit the Botanic Gardens to sense the dawn break. A badly adjusted body clock brought on by jet lag meant that I found myself jogging around the Gardens at 5.30am on Monday and Tuesday mornings – uplifted by the sounds, smells and sights of this mini paradise.

My few days in Singapore, principally to speak at the Founders Forum gathering, allowed me to gauge the Asian reaction to the prospect of a second, more menacing Trump term in office.

I did so armed with the memory of a May 2016 visit to Singapore where I had asked a gathering of some 300 people to compile a word cloud (using their mobiles) of thoughts and emotions they associated with Donald Trump. The result was harsh, and very few of the participants that day thought Trump would be elected as president in 2016, and just as few thought that Brexit would happen.

To my mind the event was emblematic of the certainty of the era of globalization, and the ways in which this was smashed by events like the first Trump presidency, Brexit and the smothering of Hong Kong’s open society.

Singapore is one of the most important places to observe these changes from – it is highly globalized (the DHL Connectedness Report highlights it as the most globalized country in the world), delicately balanced between the Chinese commercial and American worlds, and institutionally one of the strongest countries (though it is one tenth the size of County Cork, it has an active army nearly ten times the size of that of Ireland). As a leading ‘micro-power’ it has an even greater stock of soft power.

As such Singapore will acutely feel the rising tensions between China and America especially in terms of the technologies it uses, investment flows and diplomacy. For context, the soon to be secretary of state Marco Rubio has laid out the faultlines in the relationship between China and America in an interesting document entitled ‘The World China Made’.

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Indeed, several prominent politicians in Singapore such as prime minister Laurence Wong have declared the end of the ‘golden era of globalization’. My guess is that in the Trump era, Wong and colleagues will have to tread incredibly carefully diplomatically. Economically, it is clear that Singapore’s role as the wealth hub of Asia, or its ‘Geneva’ is gathering pace, and also obvious that its economy is benefitting from the growing prosperity in countries like Indonesia.

There are two other aspects of my visit that are worth stressing, less for what they say about Singapore but more for what they tell us how the ‘West’ is perceived.

First, with regard to Europe, in two separate meetings I was asked if I thought the euro would survive. This greatly surprised me as not only do I think the euro is a solid, though not yet perfectly formed currency, I have not been asked that question in Europe in nearly ten years. It suggests that Europe still has a reputational problem, or that at very least its ‘message’ is not reaching Asia. Conversely, it seems that there are too few Asian voices in the European media – connecting us to what is happening in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.

The second reflection, which also resonates across Europe, is that for the first time in at least a century, an American presidency is being launched that has a manifestly threatening and aggressive stance towards the rest of the world.

America has historically been the builder of relationships, alliances and institutions (Pax Americana) and its (soft) power has been built on this. The tenor of the Trump cabinet is increasingly clear, and many of the appointees appear to have been selected on the basis that they did controversial things in the past, or that they are prepared to do controversial things to others in the future.

This is the great unknown for the USA, that its new posture towards the rest of the world causes it to lose influence and friends.