ASEAN leaders converge on Manila as Trump's tariff blitz hangs over summit

Southeast Asian leaders are gathering in Manila, the Philippines, for the annual ASEAN summit, a run of multilateral and bilateral meetings that opens Sunday and closes Tuesday. Trade sits at the top of the pile, with US tariffs freshly imposed on much of the region and more threatened.

Donald Trump lands in the middle of it. The US president is set to meet Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr during a brief Manila stop on Tuesday, then fly to the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, for his fourth face-to-face with Xi Jinping in just over a year. The White House has confirmed it will also mark the first trilateral talks between Trump, Xi and Russia's Vladimir Putin. It is Trump's second trip to Southeast Asia since returning to the White House, after the 2025 ASEAN summit in Malaysia.

The backdrop is a tariff wave. Trump's administration announced duties of between 10 and 12.5 percent on 60 trade partners in July over their alleged failure to clamp down on forced labour, after the US Supreme Court struck down his steeper 'reciprocal' tariffs in February. The Office of the US Trade Representative is also running probes into national security and 'excess' manufacturing concerns that could bring yet more tariffs.

Southeast Asia has dodged the worst of it so far. US imports from ASEAN climbed by more than 29 percent, reaching $453.6bn in 2025, widening the trade deficit between the two sides to $327.4bn. Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, warned that the cushion is narrow: 'Overall exports are up. But this is primarily driven by shipments of electronics which are largely exempt from tariffs,' she told Al Jazeera, adding that those shipments are tied to the AI buildout and 'if that falters, ASEAN will feel it.'

Jayant Menon, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said leaders will be fixed on 'what comes next' from Washington. 'So far, the recent tariffs appear to have had a limited impact on competitiveness of ASEAN exports. But this may change in the future, with more sectoral tariffs, in particular, or other measures such as export controls,' he told Al Jazeera. He noted Trump 'still retains significant autonomous authority over trade policy' despite Republicans' crushing defeat in the November 3 midterms, and could double down rather than back off.

One concrete deliverable is on the table: the Digital Economy Framework Agreement, initiated in 2023 to ease cross-border data transfers and electronic payments, billed as a step towards an ASEAN digital economy worth $2 trillion by 2030. Phar Kim Beng, a professor of ASEAN studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia, said he expects no major measures to boost trade inside the bloc, where intraregional trade has stayed at 23 percent. 'In contrast, the European Union can cross intraregional trade of 67 percent easily,' he told Al Jazeera. 'Regardless of the tariffs intended by President Donald Trump, ASEAN will continue to muddle through by speaking of the importance of trade and more trade,' he said.