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Hi Wanha here, I'm excited to bring you a conversation we had in Singapore earlier this week in front of a live audience. This conversation has been edited and condensed. Hope you enjoy it. Hello everyone, welcome to the special edition of The Big Take Asia the US China Rivalry
in the Trump Era. It's only been, if you can believe it, eight weeks since US President Donald Trump took office again, and we've been confronted with a slew of executive orders and policy moves that have royaled markets and stemied businesses. And of course a lot of these moves, especially those focused on trade, have serious ramifications here in Asia, and they've dramatically increased this competition between the US and China.
To help us unpack how this is playing out for the two economic super and the world, please help me welcome a great panel speakers to the stage. So we've got with us Nancy Cook, who is senior national political correspondent, who joins us from Washington, d C. And John lou who oversees Bloomberg's Greater China coverage based in Beijing. We've got Tim O'Brien Bloomberg Opinions Senior executive editor based in
New York, and next to him Shuley Wrenn. She's the Bloomberg Opinion columnist who covers markets in China out of Hong Kong. Tim, by the way, is also the author of Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald, and he's fantastic stories that he's been telling us about his time with Donald. Welcome to Singapore, you guys. Well, since we're in Singapore and food is such a big element of the culture, right, we love the Hawker centers. I think this very first question is appropriate to this place.
If US China relations were dish, what dish would it be? Let me start with Shuley down there.
I guess I have to star wars Harpot. Everybody is at a table. One guest didn't ask everyone else and turn on the heat, and that you have spices splattered everywhere on everyone's face. This is what I think of very appropriate.
Tim.
I don't know if sweet and sour pork is an American idea of what a good Chinese dish is, so I might be stepping on my American toes and bring this up, but I think sweet and sour pork is useful because I think a strategy for dealing with Donald Trump is, whether you're looking at trade or diplomacy, is are you sweet with him? Or are you sour with him?
And I think people have learned over the years that you get a little more out of him with sweetness than with being sour, even though he gives other countries and diplomats and investors a lot of reasons to be sour.
Very nice, thank you, very tasty insights. I think this is also a good time to take you behind the scenes of how we produce the podcast every week. So we're going to cue up the music. Let's go. Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wanha. Every week we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today in the show, live from Singapore, the US China rivalry in the Trump era.
How are Trump's policies playing out in Asia? And is the US creating a vacuum for power and influence on the world stage that allows China to step up? Nancy, I want to start with you to get some perspective because you have sat down with Donald Trump in mar A Lago for a one on one interview, and you've covered him since twenty fifteen. What's different this time around, you think when it comes to the US China relationship and rivalry.
So I think President Trump this time is a much more sort of self assured and confident leader than he was when he first came into office. He has a much better understanding of the levers of power in the United States and how to use them. And I think people have been surprised that he is acting and moving so quickly. I think he has very firmly held beliefs on things like trade, and then is more ideologically flexible
on things like what the Chinese relationship looks like. Ultimately, what I'm watching, particularly in China is that I still think he has He always likes to have a team of rivals around him a little bit on different policy areas. So there's sort of advisors, economic advisors competing to have his ear on trade, and they have competing agendas. And
the same is true of foreign policy. There is not one person that's going to be in charge of setting the course for what the US China relationship looks like there's different foreign policy people competing, whether that's the Secretary of State Marco Rubio or the National Security Advisor of Mike Waltz. And so everybody is trying to jockey and find their place, and that will be very influential as they think about how to approach China and whatever they're going to do there.
Yeah, and I think that's also a great starting point to also talk about itself. And I mean, if Trump is different this time around, how is she president? She also different?
The difference now is president She and China are in a different position. The economy is in a weaker position, there are more headwinds, there's the property market. So I think Beijing is trying to act in a more considered way, where maybe in the first term there was wolf warrior diplomacy. I think there is an effort to be more measured in its response. I mean, the ultimate question that I think everybody in Beijing is trying to figure out is what does President Trump want?
Yeah, certainly that's what we've seen so far. Tim in DC, in New York in the US, do people understand what Trump is trying to achieve? I mean, you spent time with him. What is a sense of the endgame here from what we've seen so far.
You know, it was interesting, Juan, when you were giving the introduction and you said, it's only been eight weeks, but it seems like eight years. Because I think that's a universal reaction to this, for flurry of activity from Trump, wherever you are, and I think for people who are feeling confused about it, or threatened by it, or just wondering where it's headed. I think it's useful to try to put all of that in context. A meaningful portion
of it is performative. Trump prides himself on being a man of action and a disruptor. He is typically not. He doesn't put his hands on the steering wheel. His trade policies are not coming from a sophisticated place, that is not coming from an understanding of how markets or economies or business growth develop. It is a blunt tool that he thinks he can use to repatriate manufacturing back to the United States.
Well, we've seen certainly a lot of zigzagging on trade and tariffs, so of course were the first thing that Trump jumped on, and Trump is now talking about imposing broad reciprocal tariffs and additional sector specific tariffs April second. That's just a few weeks away. Truly, when you look at this through China's lens, I mean, Trump is obviously using what some people call this weaponized uncertainty right to bring businesses to closer to what he wants. Is China buying any of that?
I think China has realized that the US Trump is serious about rebalancing the economy. I mean, before it worked very well, right, US is the big consumer, China is the big producer. China sells products into the US and then with the trade surplus day in turn by US treasures. It worked very well. And Trump just doesn't want that. He wants the US society to be more producers based. And for China, they have realized that is done deal, and what they're trying to do these days is to
turn China into a more consumer based economy. We all know Chinese consumers don't spend, right, and they're trying to encourage consumers to spend or if they still try to produce and sell, they will try to sell to the global self. So that's what they've been trying to do.
But in the end, can these stear ups really break Chinese grip on manufacturing at this point truly.
You know, there was no doubt China was a manufacturing powerhouse. You look at like all the ev makers bid this year, they're putting the autonomous driving technology into the cards without raising price. It's not just the price point. It's not that Chinese products are cheap, they're just more useful. But the narrative a year or two ago was like, basically, there is a new technological upgrade called AI, and the China is being locked out. So the next decade forward, China will.
Not get that.
And what we're seeing with deep Seek is that actually China is not being locked down.
And then it's not just AI.
They're talking also about robotics, bringing AI features into robotics, and I think US has a lot of things to catch up on. And also like a lot of Chinese companies think that this is a great opportunity. That Trump is distracted and unfocused, and Elon Musk is also in focused. I mean does he even run Tesla anymore? Right? And BID is coming in. Shall me used to be a Spark film maker and now they are making pretty high
end electric vehicles and the smartphones. They are taking on Tesla and the Apple, so a lot of Chinese companies actually think this is an opportunity. So then tim is this whole focus on bringing back manufacturing to the US. Is that a bit shortsighted?
I mean, I think when you ask about what's his endgame, has this mercant dealist view of how economies function and how political power is wielded. You know, I think it's always a mistake to talk about what Trump's strategy is because he's not a strategic thinker. He's emotional, he's visceral, but he has very clear goals and I think essentially what they are right now is an economic hegemony for
the US and political hegemony for himself. So I think one of the reasons he's dangerous politically in the United States is he's trying to undermine institutions in the US that would be checks on his own political hegemony, the courts,
the media, universities, is political opponents. And then he've views political agemony as the US having its own defined sphere of influence that is essentially the Americas, and he doesn't want Europe or China interfering with that, and so he will latch onto any tools that allow him to get there. And then I think, you know, in terms of Trump himself, he enjoys creating chaos because it keeps his audience and his opponents back on their heels, and it allows him
to be in control of the narrative. I've covered Trump since nineteen ninety in various forms, and I was with him at mar A Lago once. We golfed together and we came off the course and he had a brand new yellow Ferrari in the driveway, and he looked at me and he said, do you want to go for a ride in it together? And I said sure. So we hop in the car and it had a paddle shifters on the steering wheel that he didn't know how
to use. So he was grinding the gears out on the car, on this four hundred and fifty thousand dollars car as we drove to downtown Palm Beach, and we pulled up to a stoplight and the windows of the car were all dark, and so no one could see who was in the car. And when we stopped at the stoplight, he goes, watch this. Trump said to me, watch this, and then he put the windows down, and everyone on the sidewalk stopped and pointed at the car
and said, look, it's Donald Trump. And then he put the windows back up, and he looked at me and he said, isn't that cool? And this is what he's doing with the world right now. He's essentially using the United States as like a giant ferrari, and he's pulling up to these various situations and putting the windows down, whether it's berating Zelenski in the Oval office, or courting Putin or embracing tariffs.
Certainly keeping us busy in the news business. I want to talk about the markets real quick, because the US doc market's been sinking in reaction to tariffs and recession concerns. Meanwhile, you've got China's market staying strong. Analysts are talking about what they call a she put, this idea that the Chinese government is going to do everything it can to achieve this five percent growth target. There's certainly no talk
of a Trump put at the moment. What are the reactions on both sides of the Pacific telling us about what investors are thinking and feeling.
The US businesses are panic gaing right now. I bet you know a number of US companies, everyone from McDonald's that makes their French fries and canola oil that comes from Canada to the big US automakers. They're calling the White House flipping out about the tariffs. I mean, the stock market did so well at the beginning of the first seven weeks, let's say, or six weeks, and all
that wealth has been erased already. And the other thing that's changed from last time is that Republicans on the Hill just really have acquiesced him entirely and are very afraid to publicly criticize him. So I think that what will happen is if the stock market continues to slide and we do seem like we're headed towards a recession, then I think he will be less popular among Republicans, among donors, among businesses, and then maybe he will, of
course correct. But he is really full steam ahead right now.
This must be so hard to plan at this point when you've got such erratic news coming out of the White House and erratic moves. Can businesses really plan at.
The no, And that is the message that they're telling the White House. But part of the problem is that's sort of unclear who is totally in charge with the US China sort of strategy. The same is true on economics and tariffs. There are a number of Trump advisors and cabinet members who have their hands in tariffs, and so it's just been a real sort of toss up about what happens with this policy.
So this unpredictability. Can you really invest or build plant and equipment if you can't have a five year plan because he's knocking you back on your feet every week with a different policy position. That's going to, I think be a present factor for quite a while, and I don't think the press or the business community will regulate that. As a deal maker, he's in charge of these processes. He has never been a great deal maker historically. In
his business career, he presided over six corporate bankruptcies. He almost went personally bankrupt, but his father bailed him out before that happened. And within the business community in the United States, he was regarded as a cartoon character and routinely got taken to the clean by better deal makers. Robert bass on the sale of the Plaza hotel. You could go on and on down a whole list of deals.
But he's had this myth because of the Apprentice, that he can fix complicated situations, that he's got the analytic and intuitive skills to do that, and he's lacked them since he was seven.
After the break, the consequences of the Trump era on Asia, will Asian economies become collateral damage in the wake of the trade war, and how can China capitalize on this moment? The ramifications of a US China trade war go beyond just these two superpowers. And while Asia isn't directly targeted by the latest US tariffs, the region is very trade dependent. I asked our panel about what the impact would be on the region. Here's Bloomberg's shulely Ren.
Again, Singapore has done very well because of China's capital offlow in the last couple of years tremendously. I think a Viennam like especially North Vietnam, has been doing very well because it's a very natural China plus one destination right like it's very close to mainland China's industry catalog. And then Vietnamese people are hard working and entrepreneurial and educated.
But I do feel that countries like Vietnam had to stay under Trump's radar because Vietnam believe or not, runs the third and largest trade deficit with the US after Mexico and China. So one day, if Trump wakes up and say, wait a minute, you're using Vietnam to explore your stuff into US, then I think Vietnam just has to be very careful.
Nervous times, certainly for everyone. I want to pivot to foreign policy. Trump has imposed tariffs on North American neighbors. He had a shouting match with Ukrainian President Voladimir Zelinski in the Oval Office. He's threatening tariffs on Europe. These are the traditional allies of the US. All of that, of course, must be having a very chilling effect for America's friends here in Asia, from Taiwan to South Korea
to Japan. And I want to ask you, do you think she sees this as an opportunity, especially here in Asia, but around the world. How can China capitalize on this moment when the US is being erratic, turning its back on friends and allies.
I think Beijing sees this as an opportunity to advance its interests around the world. If you listen to Chinese officials now, they want the world to see Beijing or see China as an anchor of stability in a chaotic world as a result of American and Trump administration policies. And it sounds like the administration has taken its eyes off the ball a little bit, like it seems like
there's so much else going on. And if that is the case, then yeah, then she has an opportunity, right If the US is too busy thinking about Russia or the Middle East, then China will have more room to do things and to try and advance its own interests.
I also think that as Trump sheds sort of conventional allies in Europe or all these different places, there's going to be like a whole new reordering of global superpowers. And I think that presents an opportunity for China, don't you think so? Or maybe not.
Someone described the situation to me as Trump is digging the world all the pieces and throwing them up in the air, and everybody's trying to pick things up now. And this person said, China's going to end up picking up more pieces than it had before he got thrown up. I think there's a really good chance that will happen.
And Trump, also, just to add it quickly, is an isolationist. He does not think that the US needs to police the world. He really wants to focus on stuff at home. When I interviewed him at mar A Lago, you know, his comments on Taiwan were really some of the most striking ones in the interview. We sat with him for an hour and a half and he was basically like, what has Taiwan done for the US lately? He said that he was like, I don't see what they're doing
for us. You know, they've stolen our jobs, Like why should we protect them? And I think you know what we're seeing happening with Ukraine and sort of his unwillingness to defend Ukraine or pull back intelligence there, pull back money. If I were living in Taiwan, I would be fairly freaked out.
Taiwan's Defense minister, right after the blow up in the Oval office with President Zelenski, had this quote I thought was really interesting and I'm paraphrasing, but essentially said, we realize that when talking with the US, you cannot discuss values with the US without also addressing national interests, which is like very different from what Taiwan's officials were saying during the Biden administration, which was all about shared.
Values you know, I remember this conversation I want to here with that screenwriter about his process, and he said he would write scenes out on index cards, throw them into the middle of the floor, and then rearrange them to see what works. And that's essentially Trump's foreign policy.
And the danger with that is I have to believe China and Russia are shocked at how much progress they've made over the last two months without having after decades, decades of strategically and economically and militarily trying to find ways to get around the US or supersede the US, and Trump has just walked up in a few short
weeks and delivered to them on a platter. But it also isn't a sophisticated understanding of what we all get when we have shared defenses, which it creates stability, it creates economic opportunity, It allows people to spend domestically in their economies on things other than defense, and it encourages integration that is safer and more prosperous for the world.
And that's what's informing his defenestration of USAID, because he doesn't understand how American soft power functions in the world. And these come from hard won lessons about how you successfully achieve peace and prosperity, and he grew up. John and I were talking on less earlier. His father made his fortune building subsidized housing for working class Americans, and he ended up cheating the federal government during the nineteen forties and fifties, and he got kicked out of that program.
And then he did a similar thing in New York State, and he was getting funds from New York State for housing development, and he did the same thing. He was overbilling. He was creating faith companies, and he got kicked out of the New York State programs. And he essentially resigned after that or retired rather from building. But within the family, they never said Dad got in trouble because he was dealing from the government. What they said was the government
came and took Dad's properties away. The government came and took his candy away. And that informs Trump's view of emigration and informs Trump's view of foreign policy. It's beware, someone's going to come and take things away from you, and if you don't protect those things, you're a sucker and you will be ripped off. And the only way to do that is to isolate and put walls up and defend yourself. And that's a perilous calcil in the world we live in.
We're really talking about re ordering of alliances and friendships and coalitions. Right at this point, since we don't have much time left, I wonder if we can just stare into an imaginary crystal ball. Right, we're twenty twenty nine, four years from now, Right, what does the world look like, and Asian in particular, four years after Trump?
I would just talk about the development of an economy after World War Two in Asia. The economies that have done very well are mostly driven by export, right, export oriented economy. So how do the rest of the Asian economies that have now reached the upper middle income level become rich themselves? They have to think of a model that's other than exports.
I think there's a happy and a sad answer to that. And I'd hate to end on a sad note for everybody, but I'll start with the sad and then go to the happy. The sad note is that I think what you're seeing around isolationism and predation continues on that, and we have a world in which people have armed up and trading sufferers and diplomacy suffers, and again we're in
an earlier century with the fallout all that entails. I think the happy outcome is that people understand why it's important to stand up for institutions and values and processes that we need to have civilized societies and push back against that. But I think we're on a knife edge. I think we are in a very historically perilous place right now.
I think Asia will be more Chinese, like I think you're going to have Chinese electric cars and lots of markets around Asia. I think you'll have people in Asia using deep seek and Chinese Ai. And then I think when people travel from Singapore to New York, they'll have to get like completely different devices because none of those things will exist in the US. I think Europe is really hard to read at the moment where that goes.
But I do feel like this four years will see China being more of fluential in Asia.
I think in four years it will be like Russia, China and the US sort of competing against one another and then sometimes cutting deals with each other, but also trying to sort of woo either through force potentially in Russia's case, or Trump with Greenland or the Panama Canal sort of competing with one another, but also trying to select new allies or new territories, each to their own side. And I think those will be the three accesses that I'll be watching.
Yeah, certainly a new world order they were seeing forming right now. With that, I want to thank my wonderful panelists. Thank you for your lovely and insightful thoughts. I think with that we're going to call it a rap And if you enjoy this discussion, please subscribe to The Big Take Asia. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week. This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News.
I'm wan Ha.
This episode was produced by Young Young and Naomi. It was edited by Grace Jennings, ed Quist, Patti Hirsch, and John Leu. It was fact checked by Naomi and mixed and sound designed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Hugia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Miemsterboer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening. See you next time