Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, April 15, 2025
Article by Dr. Tricia Yeoh, University of Nottingham Malaysia
The reciprocal tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 2 – what he referred to as “Liberation Day” – hit Southeast Asian economies particularly hard. While they and others received a brief respite in the form of a 90-day pause, with a universal lowered reciprocal tariff of 10 per cent, tariffs on goods from China spiked to 145 per cent. The increasingly inconsistent and erratic policymaking from the Trump administration will ultimately push Southeast Asia away from making deals with the U.S., an increasingly unreliable trade partner.