WASHINGTON: Sweeping tariffs set to be imposed by President Donald Trump next month may cast a pall over his top diplomat’s first official trip to Asia this week — just as the US seeks to boost relations with Indo-Pacific nations to counter China’s growing influence in the region.
Trump on Monday sent notice to several countries about higher tariffs if they don’t make trade deals with the US, including to a number of Asian countries. The move came just a day before Secretary of State Marco Rubio planned to depart for a Southeast Asian regional security conference in Malaysia.
Top diplomats and senior officials from at least eight countries that Trump has targeted for the new tariffs, which would go into effect on Aug. 1, will be represented at the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum in Kuala Lumpur that Rubio will attend on Thursday and Friday.
State Department officials say tariffs and trade will not be Rubio’s focus during the meetings, which the Trump administration hopes will prioritize maritime safety and security in the South China Sea, where China has become increasingly aggressive toward its small neighbors, as well as combating transnational crime.
However, Rubio may be hard-pressed to avoid the tariff issue that has vexed some of America’s closest allies and partners in Asia, including Japan and South Korea, which Trump says would face 25 percent tariffs absent a deal. Neither of those countries is a member of ASEAN but both will be represented at the meetings in Kuala Lumpur.
Rubio’s “talking points on the China threat will not resonate with officials whose industries are being battered by 30-40 percent tariffs,” said Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific during the Obama administration.
“In fact, when Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim last week said ASEAN will approach challenges ‘as a united bloc’ — he wasn’t talking about Chinese coercion, but about US tariffs,” Russel said.
Among ASEAN states, Trump has so far announced up to 40 percent tariffs on at least six of the 10 members of the bloc, including the meeting host Malaysia, which would face a 25 percent tariff mainly on electronics and electrical product imports to the United States.
Southeast Asian countries not yet targeted by the US include Brunei, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, which recently agreed to a trade deal with Trump. The Trump administration has courted most Southeast Asian nations in a bid to blunt or at least temper China’s push to dominate the region.
In Kuala Lumpur, Rubio also will likely come face-to-face with the foreign ministers of two of America’s biggest adversaries: China and Russia. US officials could not say if meetings with either are planned for the short time — about 36 hours — that Rubio will be in Malaysia.
Russel noted that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is a veteran of such gatherings and “fluent in ASEAN principles and conventions,” while Rubio “is a rookie trying to sell an ‘America First’ message to a deeply skeptical audience.”
Issues with both countries remain substantial, particularly over Ukraine.
Trump on Tuesday expressed his exasperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, “I’m not happy with him, I can tell you that much right now” as Moscow ramps up attacks in Ukraine amid the American leader’s push for a peace deal.
Trump also announced that the US would resume providing Ukraine with defensive weapons after the Pentagon announced a surprise pause in some deliveries last week.
US officials continue to accuse China of resupplying and revamping Russia’s military industrial sector, allowing it to produce additional weapons with which it can attack Ukraine.
Trump’s tariffs may cast a pall over Rubio’s first official trip to Asia
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Trump’s tariffs may cast a pall over Rubio’s first official trip to Asia
- State Department officials say tariffs and trade will not be Rubio’s focus during the meetings
- However, Rubio may be hard pressed to avoid the tariff issue that has vexed some of America’s closest allies and partners in Asia
Italian general challenges Meloni from the right
- A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down”
- Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections
ROME: A retired general who criticizes the EU, wants to send home illegal migrants and says Ukraine should accept a peace deal with Russia is challenging Italy’s hard-right government on its own turf.
Roberto Vannacci, 57, last month defected from the far-right League party, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government, and set up a new party he said is “proud of being right-wing.”
Opinion polls put the new “National Future” at around three percent support, most of it taken from the League, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, but also Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy.
Meloni’s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support — more than it won in 2022 elections.
But the general offers “the first movement emerging on the right that isn’t aligned with the three main parties,” Lorenzo Castellani, professor of politics at Rome’s Luiss University, said.
A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, “The World Upside Down.”
In it, he complained about a “dictatorship of minorities,” while saying Italian star volleyball player Paola Egonu, who is black, had features that “do not represent Italian-ness.”
He was suspended from his army job, with Defense Minister Guido Crosetto — a member of Meloni’s party — saying that his “personal ramblings ... discredit the army, the Defense Ministry and the constitution.”
But in the end, he was allowed to retire, and the controversy made him a celebrity on the far right.
Salvini, whose anti-immigration League has been losing ground to Meloni’s in recent years, invited him into his party and Vannacci was elected to the European Parliament in 2024.
But last month the ex-general struck out on his own, taking with him two League MPs and another who was independent but formerly in Meloni’s party.
He is targeting voters disenchanted with Salvini and also Meloni, who has radical far-right roots but in office has taken a more pragmatic approach.
National Future is “a party of the true right, pure, sincere, proud, unashamed of being right-wing,” and “not hesitant, not fearful,” Vannacci told the foreign press association Thursday.
Once a firebrand euroskeptic, Meloni has worked closely with the EU in office, while her flagship promise to cut illegal immigration has been tempered by a major boost in visas for legal migrants.
Vannacci has “a more extremist approach to issues like immigration, like security, where he explicitly talks about remigration,” Castellani said.
The ex-general highlights Italy’s Roman-Christian roots and has called for migrants to be returned to their countries of origin if they arrived illegally or committed a crime.
While Meloni has distanced herself from Italy’s Fascist past, Vannacci was accused of revisionism last year after a social media post defending the democratic credentials of dictator Benito Mussolini.
National sovereignty, meanwhile, is a priority, with Vannacci lambasting the EU as both overreaching member states’ rights and globally ineffective — not least in the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
