Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: ASEAN plans for an economic future beyond the United States, Thailand and Cambodia exchange their first shots since a July cease-fire, and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto speaks out on Gaza at UNGA.
ASEAN’s Post-American Plan
Another day, another tariff. On Sept. 25, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his latest round of tariffs, encompassing a slightly strange grab bag of categories: pharmaceuticals, furniture, sinks, and heavy trucks. Calculating the exact value of ASEAN exports that fall in these buckets is hard. But some very rough calculations by me based on data from the Organisation of Economic Complexity comes up with a figure likely a little under $25bn.
For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization spanning the world’s most trade-dependent region—and which counts the United States as its second-biggest export market after China—this trade-policy Russian roulette is not something that it can take lightly.
Last week, ASEAN’s economic ministers met in Kuala Lumpur. Behind the typically measured-to-the-point-of-mealy-mouthed statements expressing “concern over the growing trend of protectionism and the rise of unilateral trade measures” was a quiet plan. ASEAN is now preparing for a trading future that does not rely on the United States.
As one well-placed person involved in shaping ASEAN’s stance on the matter put it to me, the United States accounts for about 13 percent of global trade, and if it defected from the current international trading system, that would hurt. But, this person said, ASEAN will be fine so long as it can keep the old rules going with the other 87 percent of the world.
Looking at the documents coming out of last week’s conference, we can see two prongs to this approach. The first involves deepening ASEAN economic integration. A loose affair compared to the European Union’s single market, there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that the bloc can pick. Moves to integrate customs, ease trade in goods and services, open more sectors for investment, and integrate digital markets are on the table.
It sounds dry, but every little bit helps. Moves on customs are particularly important. A line in the ASEAN media statement about combating origin fraud suggests a push by the bloc to coordinate in handling additional U.S. tariffs on goods that are “transshipped” from China. As we’ve covered in this newsletter previously, with the Trump administration less than clear on what this provision actually means, many worry it could strangle ASEAN’s industrial base, which relies heavily on Chinese inputs.
The second prong is building ties with the rest of the world. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—a trade deal spanning 15 signatories, including all 10 ASEAN members as well as China, Japan, and South Korea, and which came into effect in 2022—is central to this effort. There are plans to speed up its implementation and expand it to include Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Chile, and Bangladesh.
A slew of other agreements is in the air. A trade deal with Canada should conclude by the end of 2026. An upgrade to ASEAN’s trade deal with China will be signed next month. An upgrade to the deal with India is being worked on, and talks to bolster the existing deal with South Korea will kick off soon. And down the line, agreements with the Persian Gulf states are also being looked at.
All this will take time. ASEAN’s most recent trade agreement, the aforementioned RCEP, took about a decade to build. And even the bloc’s most recent bilateral agreement with Hong Kong took more than three years of negotiations. But the intent is there, and Trump’s tariffs add urgency.
ASEAN countries are already pushing for progress individually. On Sept. 23 and 26, Indonesia signed trade deals with the EU and Canada respectively, both hurried over the line in the response to U.S. tariffs. The EU is also hoping for agreements with Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand next year.
This doesn’t mean that the United States is irrelevant. Various ASEAN countries made concessions worth, theoretically, billions of dollars just to get bad trade deals with Trump over the summer. But while Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, can saber-rattle at the ASEAN conference about making semiconductors in the United States, Vietnamese companies are still pushing to do it at home.
What We’re Watching
Shots fired on Thai-Cambodian border. The cease-fire between Thailand and Cambodia is under strain after an exchange of fire along the border on Sept.. 27. Thailand said it had incurred no casualties, while Cambodia declined to comment. This area is the site of the border dispute that sparked a brief war in late July, and the area saw some of the fiercest fighting in that period.
Facts are unclear, with both sides accusing the other of shooting first. Cambodia’s account, from a Defense Ministry spokeswoman, is that Thai forces fired on Cambodian positions and Cambodia did not retaliate. The Thai account, given by an army spokesperson, is that Cambodian soldiers fired on Thai troops. The spokesperson later posted on X saying that a task force in the area had “ordered retaliatory fire as needed.”
In speeches to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), both sides have since accused each other of provocations. Cambodia’s former leader and power behind the throne Hun Sen has called for ASEAN observers led by Malaysia to lead an investigation into the cease-fire violation. The Thai military has further accused Cambodia of staging the incident to provoke Thai retaliation ahead a scheduled visit by ASEAN cease-fire observers.
Indonesia speaks out on Gaza at UNGA. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto spoke out on the Israel-Hamas conflict at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City last week. Of the nine representatives of ASEAN nations that spoke during UNGA’s high-level week, seven raised the issue of Gaza, a big issue for many publics in the region. (The exceptions were Cambodia and Thailand.)
Prabowo reiterated Indonesia’s support for a two-state solution, but some interpreted a comment that any settlement would need to guarantee Israel’s security as a softening of Indonesia’s line. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Prabowo’s speech, which also included an offer of 20,000 Indonesian soldiers as peacekeepers in “in Gaza or elsewhere—in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Libya.”
However, Indonesia’s foreign minister quickly emphasized that Indonesia’s stance still prioritizes Palestine’s sovereignty.
U.N. meeting on Rohingya. Myanmar was the only ASEAN country not to address the General Assembly. However, the country will feature in a “High-level Conference on the Situation of Rohingya Muslims and Other Minorities in Myanmar” on Tuesday. The spearhead of this conference, based on an UNGA resolution passed in March, is Bangladesh, which hosts an estimated 1 million Rohingya refugees who have fled genocide in Myanmar.
While speaking at UNGA, Bangladesh interim leader Muhammad Yunus warned of disaster for Rohingya refugees hosted in Cox’s Bazar, a district in southeastern Bangladesh, unless more aid is provided.
“Without urgent new funding, the monthly ration may have to be halved to a paltry $6 per person,” Yunus said.
Vietnam’s leader to visit North Korea. Vietnam’s leader, Communist Party General Secretary To Lam, will visit North Korea in October, according to Reuters. (This has yet to be officially confirmed.) Such a trip would be the first visit by a Vietnamese leader to North Korea since General Secretary Nong Duc Manh traveled there in 2007. The visit would come on the heels of Lam’s August visit to South Korea, where he signed agreements to boost trade and purchase weapons.
Despite being fellow communist countries, Vietnam and North Korea have a complex relationship. Allied during the Vietnam War, relations declined sharply afterward when North Korea opposed Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia. The relationship revived but remained limited from the 1990s on. The involvement of a Vietnamese national in the 2017 assassination of Kim Jong Un’s brother caused a serious breach, though North Korea apologized in 2018.
Recently, North Korea has launched a diplomatic push in Southeast Asia. Kim visited Vietnam in 2019, and Vietnam is the only Southeast Asian state to have sent multiple delegations on official visits to Pyongyang since it reopened its borders in 2024.
Photo of the Week
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (right, front seat) waves from an open-top car owned and driven by Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta as Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao (left, backseat) looks on, in Dili, East Timor, on Sept. 23.Valentino Dariell De Sousa/AFP/Getty Images
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Robert McNamara Chose Loyalty to the President by Julian Zelizer
- India and the Rebalancing of Asia by C. Raja Mohan
- Europe Is Going After Russia’s Frozen Assets After All by Keith Johnson
What We’re Reading
An expensive free school meals program is Prabowo’s signature policy. But repeated food poisoning scandals are taking the shine off. Pathoni Syamsudin explores the issue in the Jakarta Post.
“From the perspective of Malaysian leaders, the more benign power and trusted partner today is not the United States, but China,” writes Murni Abdul Hamid for the Interpreter.
The Financial Times’ Ruchir Sharma writes about how Southeast Asian economies risk drift and failure. His scathing indictment of Prabowo’s policy in Indonesia made the rounds of local financial groups.
“Duterte would always say: ‘If I need to kill you, I will kill you for the safety of most of the people of this country,’ and that is my view also.” With former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte facing a trial in the International Criminal Court, Kate Lamb and Mores Heramis with The Guardian interview former members of the death squads mobilized during Duterte’s drug war.
In Focus
Vietnam’s LGBT backlash. Just three countries in Asia allow same-sex marriage: Taiwan, Nepal, and Thailand, with the latter only legalizing it in January. For a while, Vietnam seemed likely to beat Thailand to the punch. Now, though, the tides seem to have shifted, with reports emerging that various events for Pride, which Vietnam celebrates in September, have been shut down at the last minute. A nervousness around potential protest and a wave of nationalist sentiment may be to blame.
Vietnam has seen public policy shift quickly on LGBT rights. Previously uninterested, in the 1990s, the government began cracking down on so-called “social evils,” including homosexuality, as the AIDS epidemic spread to Vietnam. In 2000, the country formally banned same-sex marriage. However, in 2014, this criminalization was repealed, and many hoped that more was to come.
Social attitudes have also moved fast. A 2013 poll found that only 33.7 percent of Vietnamese respondents supported same-sex marriage. But in 2023, Pew Research Center polling found that 65 percent of Vietnamese respondents supported the right to same-sex marriage—actually slightly higher than Thailand’s 60 percent.
This month some saw troubling signs that official attitudes were becoming less tolerant. In a Facebook post, VietPride said that “many events could not take place as planned due to constraints in organizing conditions.”
Government tolerance for any sort of activism seems to be shrinking. Reimposition of political orthodoxy by the Vietnamese government has been the game for a few years now. New cybersecurity laws and tighter controls on foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations make life harder. And there is an increasingly nationalist tenor in parts of public discourse.
This sort of sentiment seems to be bad news for LGBT groups in Vietnam, which are seen with a suspicion of dissent and nonstate activism. This is especially so if they seem somehow foreign-tinged.
LGBT groups have long been suspected of acting as Trojan horses for foreign influence and anti-government agitation. Activists lobbying the government for repeal of the ban on same-sex marriage in the early 2010s deliberately shaped their approach to avoid any hint that they were opposed to the government or foreign in their ideas.
Some now suggest a change of tack from activists might be needed. The success in 2014 came from helping LGBT people fit into the government agenda. So, some ask, could success be found in in arguing that same-sex marriage fits with the “era of national rise” the government is promoting?
Interestingly enough, even if such tactics do find success, Vietnam would not be the first dictatorship—or even the first communist state—to legalize same-sex marriage. That honor belongs to Cuba, which took the step in 2022.