As Donald Trump's election odds grow, US allies in Europe and Asia reassess China strategy

The attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump over the weekend may have given his campaign a boost and raised his chances of a re-election. But it might have also raised some eyebrows among Washington's allies.

According to diplomatic observers, the increased odds of a Trump victory in the November election are likely to prompt US allies - from those in Europe to Asia - to assess the potential implications of that outcome and, in some cases, recalibrate their approach towards China.

Trump, who was confirmed as the Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday, was shot in the ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

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While it remains to be seen if the incident will have an outright impact on the elections, support for the ex-president swelled after photos of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist were posted on social media.

"It will guarantee that every Trump supporter now will be a Trump voter ... Trump's voters are energised, Biden's voters are demoralised," Frank Luntz, a US pollster, wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, after the shooting.

"The 2024 presidential election is now Trump's to lose."

In Europe, bureaucrats have been preparing for the possibility of Trump's return, which they have long considered a worst-case scenario. They expected that the close ties enjoyed with the Biden administration would not survive into Trump 2.0.

During his first term, Trump waged a trade war with Europe and threatened to pull out of Nato if its European members did not increase their defence budgets.

With a war raging in Ukraine and Trump's vice-presidential pick J.D. Vance among the most prominent voices calling for an end to Washington's aid for Kyiv, a white knuckle panic is now percolating through Brussels and other European capitals.

"How do you plan for chaos?" asked one European diplomat. "We know it will be rough, and we need to step up, but we will never be ready enough."

Ursula von der Leyen, the hawkish European Commission president who is expected to secure a second term in office on Thursday, is likely to continue with a tough China agenda regardless of November's vote.

There is a consensus in Brussels that a more assertive trade policy is needed to address persistent gripes with Beijing's economic model, while China's close ties with Russia have toxified the bilateral atmosphere.

But question marks remain over how far Brussels would go with Trump.

Under Biden, the US has leaned on the EU to go harder on China. His closest advisers have built cosy ties with the small coterie advising von der Leyen.

Specific policy points, such as a proposal to screen outbound investments and an early-stage evaluation into dependency on Chinese-made legacy semiconductors, came out of the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Technology Council (TTC) amid pressure from the White House, EU sources said. Neither has gained great traction among the EU's 27 member states.

If Trump is re-elected, the fear is that the pressure would be more intense and baldly transactional, with little of the collegial atmosphere that has been noted at the TTC events, through which the allies have also coordinated closely on sanctions against Russia and setting digital standards.

Many doubt that the TTC itself will survive, with Trump pledging to slap a 10 per cent tariff on all imports, including those from the EU. Even when dealing with a supposedly friendly Biden camp, Brussels was unable to negotiate a permanent end to tariffs on steel and aluminium launched in the heat of EU-US tensions in Trump's first term.

"There is going to be a lot of noise and it will be a challenging period at the beginning, if Trump comes back," said Noah Barkin, a senior adviser with Rhodium Group's China practice.

"But the US needs Europe. Trump's message is that the US is going it alone, but the reality is, when the US is shutting China out, it needs Europe even more. Europe is not without leverage, but just as it has learned to use it with China, it might need to learn to use it against Trump."

The grand bargain could be on foreign policy: continued US support for Ukraine in exchange for Europe backing Washington more strongly on China.

"Trump will be asking for certain things on China, and some of those will be difficult to take. Europe is going to want to push back selectively," Barkin added.

Trump can be expected to rail against a pipeline of EU legislation that could affect both American and Chinese businesses, including a carbon border tax and a controversial deforestation law.

Technology is expected to be a fierce transatlantic battleground, with Brussels' attempts to bring giant social media and e-commerce platforms in line with stringent European rules on privacy and consumer protection rubbing rivals in both Beijing and Washington the wrong way.

Days after X owner Elon Musk became embroiled in a spat on the platform with EU officials over charges that its "blue check" verification process and online content rules deceive users, he was reported to have pledged US$45 million a month to a new super political action committee backing Trump's campaign.

"We have to expect that European enforcement of these issues will be a very, very hot topic, because I think it's pretty clear that Musk isn't going to give that kind of money to Trump without asking for something in return," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund for the United States.

"Trump hates Europe ... but whoever takes over von der Leyen's role, they're going to feel his wrath. If the EU is serious about enforcing its new rules, how do you politically abandon that?" Kirkegaard said, adding that the EU "will have to prepare itself for much more intense confrontation on tech".

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump (centre, left) appears with vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance (centre, right) during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday. Photo: AP alt=Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump (centre, left) appears with vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance (centre, right) during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday. Photo: AP>

Japan, a long-time ally of the US, has also started making preparations for a Trump victory.

Cheung Mong, an associate professor with the school of international liberal studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, noted that Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party began contacting Trump's team as early as January.

In April, former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso, a senior figure in the party, met Trump in New York seeking to develop US-Japan ties, with the former US president calling the Japanese politician "a highly respected man in Japan ... and somebody that I've liked".

Cheung said Japan's official stance on a possible Trump victory was still being assessed as the Asian nation's own presidential election set for September could usher in a new leader with their own opinion on the issue.

But Japan's concerns about a Trump re-election have lingered. Cheung pointed out that the Biden administration follows a strategy of "coordination with allies in Asia and Europe".

"But if Trump is elected, he will pursue an 'America first' policy, putting pressure on Japan to make concessions," he said.

"Japan's concerns mainly include two points: first, the demand to increase Japan's share of the costs for the US military stationed in Japan, and second, the demand to reduce the US-Japan trade deficit."

The previous Trump administration called for US allies and partners to contribute more to their shared defence. In 2019, the former president asked Japan - which hosts the US Navy's Seventh Fleet and the Third Marine Expeditionary Force - to quadruple its annual payments to the US for forces stationed there.

For Cheung, whether a Trump re-election would affect ties between US allies and China hinges on how Trump views Biden's China policy.

He said if Trump believed that Biden was too tough on China and chose to adopt a slightly softer policy towards Beijing, Japan would implement a "tactical hedging strategy and adopt a more conciliatory strategy towards China".

"However, if Trump believes Biden's policy towards China is too weak and needed to be revised, then Japan will be happy to continue maintaining its current strategic balancing strategy against China to curb the Chinese military's access to the Western Pacific," he said.

Similar concerns over defence are likely to be raised in South Korea, according to analysts.

Ryu Yong-wook, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said Trump could end up "putting a great deal of pressure" on Seoul if re-elected.

During Trump's presidency, the two sides shared a diplomatic goal of engaging with North Korea and became "useful partners" on that front, he said, but there were "significant pressures" on the South Korean government to increase its contributions to the maintenance of the alliance.

The result was a 13 per cent increase in Seoul's financial contributions to the cost of hosting American troops.

This, Ryu suggested, could again emerge as a "thorny issue affecting the alliance ties and solidarity" if a new Trump administration sought a further increase from South Korea.

"The South Korean government is preparing for that possibility, calibrating carefully what concessions to make and what to demand in return," said Ryu, a China and Korea affairs specialist.

One possible approach would be for Seoul to negotiate and conclude the alliance defence budget with the Biden administration before Trump's possible return to power "to buy time to figure out the policy direction and preferences of the new Trump administration", he said.

"If the new Trump administration behaves in an egoistic manner and seeks to maximise its interests at the expense of hurting South Korea's interests, then there will likely be a domestic voice that will question South Korea's close security cooperation with the US, which will also demand a recalibration of [its] stance toward China."

The Philippines - which has deepened its ties with Washington amid heightened tensions with Beijing in the South China Sea - is also likely considering the impacts of a Trump re-election now that the odds have increased.

Don McLain Gill, a lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila, said a new Trump administration would probably pursue an Indo-Pacific strategy that prioritised US pre-eminence and "not necessarily [its] network of alliances and partnerships".

Noting that the foundations of a Trump presidency would not focus on values and ideology, he said China would be "looked at as a crucial challenge to US influence rather than to the stability of the liberal democratic order".

"This has several implications for the Philippines and the security of the greater South China Sea," he said.

This meant that even if Trump were to take a hardline stance against China in the disputed waterway - like he did during his previous presidency - it would be "based on his desire to reposition America's dominance" instead of acting for the purpose of its alliance with Manila, Gill said.

Under the previous Trump administration, Washington overtly rejected nearly all Chinese claims in the disputed waterway and it adopted a "more confrontational" position against Beijing, he said.

Calling Trump a "transactional leader", Gill said Manila bore concerns that Washington may abandon key areas of American commitment, such as Taiwan, while piling more responsibilities on its allies in the Western Pacific, including the Philippines.

One thing the Philippine government would seek to do is to enhance its economic standing in the face of China's economic coercion, he said, given that the basis of US investment under Trump would probably be based on profits rather than the geopolitically driven concept of friendshoring.

Ryu from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy suggested that a Trump re-election could create opportunities for Beijing to mend its relations with neighbouring countries as these nations might recalibrate their approach to China due to pressures from the new Trump administration.

"But Beijing must realise that its self-centred and 'Wolf Warrior' diplomacy will only backfire," he said. "Instead, it should seek to construct a genuine win-win relationship based on mutual respect. In other words, Beijing must also fundamentally reorientate its foreign policy toward Asian countries."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.