SEOUL, South Korea — With America’s NATO allies already reeling from the Trump government’s apparent U-turn on prior U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia, East Asian allies nervously await the full attention of the new administration.

President Trump gave strong hints of what’s to come in the foreign policy and economic passages from his lengthy address to Congress Tuesday night, prompting immediate pushback on several fronts. One core U.S. message is that allies and partners must beef up defenses and spend big. Another is that unfair trade practices will face a tariff hammer.

Both messages put East Asia’s prosperous democracies on notice that big changes in relations with the U.S. are in the works.

Statements from Under Secretary of Defense for Policy nominee Elbridge Colby — who emphasized in his confirmation hearing Tuesday Mr. Trump’s themes of “peace through strength and always putting America first” — generated high-profile responses in Tokyo and Taipei on Wednesday.

After the comments from Mr. Trump in his address to Congress, South Korean officials challenged the president’s arguments over fair trade but also braced for new, higher tariffs from Washington in the coming days.

Japanese officials appeared to be digging in against pressure from the new U.S. administration over its defense spending and contributions to regional security.

“Japan decides its defense budget by itself,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told the Diet Wednesday. “It should not be decided based on what other nations tell it to do.”

Mr. Ishiba was responding to widely reported comments from Mr. Colby, who underwent a confirmation hearing by the Senate Armed Forces Committee Tuesday, stating, “Japan should be spending at least 3% of GDP on defense as soon as possible.”

NATO nations have long been challenged to meet a benchmark of 2% of GDP for defense, though the new Trump administration is seeking to raise that standard as well.

In 2022, amid a long, slow reversal of its formerly pacifist posture, Japan announced it would double its defense budget to about 2% of GDP by 2027, though questions remain over where this money will come from.

Mr. Ishiba was not the only official in the world’s fourth-largest economy to talk back.

“What we think important is the substance of defense capabilities, not the volume or GDP ratio,” Tokyo’s leading spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo.

Mr. Colby also urged Japan to accelerate “the revamp of its military to focus on a denial defense of its own archipelago and collective defense in its region.”

In recent years, Tokyo has strategically refocused from the Russia-facing island of Hokkaido in the north, to the Taiwan- and China-facing Ryukyu Islands in the south.

That shift includes expanding marine forces and emplacing bases over key straits that Chinese warships transit to enter and exit the open Pacific. It is also increasing air and naval capabilities, notably with F-35 light carriers.

Taiwan’s opposition takes a hit

Regarding Taiwan, Taipei’s defense spend was well below 3% of GDP goal, Mr. Colby stated, adding, “They should be more like 10%, or at least something in that ballpark.”

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, whose government has pushed back strongly against Chinese aggression, has vowed to raise defense spend to 3%, but is facing powerful opposition to the increase led by the main opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT). In January, opposition parties passed cuts and freezes to defense budgets.

Mr. Colby called that “profoundly disturbing,” and Sen. Dan Sullivan, Alaska Republican, accused the KMT of “playing a dangerous game” at this week’s confirmation hearing.

Apparently stung by the comments, the KMT responded to Taiwan’s China News Agency, saying it supported a “moderate and effective” increase in military budgets.  

New pressures on South Korea

Paralyzed by an ongoing presidential impeachment saga, there was no high-level response from Seoul to U.S. statements.

Last year, Mr. Colby insisted that America’s key regional adversary is China and the U.S. should not “break its spear” fighting North Korea. That, plus comments that Seoul should take “overwhelming responsibility” for its defense,” led some South Koreans to question his commitment to the Seoul-Washington mutual defense treaty.

Asked if it was time for Seoul to assume wartime command of its troops, Mr. Colby told the Senate Committee, “I believe that President Trump’s vision of foreign policy involves empowering capable and willing allies like South Korea, and thus I support efforts to bolster South Korea’s role in the alliance.”

In 2007, a liberal administration in Seoul announced its intent to assume operational control of its troops in wartime — “OPCON Transfer.” That would remove them from the command of a U.S. general who heads the current Combined Forces Command.

It has not happened. Conservative administrations, fearing the transfer would trigger a reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Korea, have slow-walked the plan. Some U.S. generals have publicly said that South Korea lacks the necessary capabilities, and huge questions hover over who would command a joint force in wartime.

Saying he would review it “carefully,” Mr. Colby called OPCON transfer “a delicate issue.”

South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense offered no comments today.

More worrying statements for Seoul came directly from Mr. Trump, who singled out South Korea when discussing his more aggressive trade policy Tuesday night on Capitol Hill — with criticisms that Seoul officials said were not based on the facts on the ground.

“South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher” than U.S. duties on South Korean imports, Mr. Trump said in his speech to Congress. “Think of that … four times higher, and we give so much help, militarily and in so many other ways, to South Korea.”

But the U.S. and South Korea struck a free trade agreement — which cuts or removes tariffs, bilaterally — in 2012. That agreement was renegotiated at Mr. Trump’s insistence during his first presidential term.

Mr. Trump’s numbers, Seoul says, were wrong: An official at South Korea’s Ministry of Industry Trade and Energy told local media that South Korean tariffs on U.S. imports averaged just 0.79 percent last year and are set to drop further this year, according to stipulations in the free-trade agreement.

Even so, last year, South Korea recorded a trade surplus with the United States of more than $55 billion.

South Korea and Japan were both alarmed at Mr. Trump’s announcement of tariffs to steel imports beginning from March 12, and more anxiety lies ahead. Mr. Trump has signaled that he will impose tariffs on autos — a sector in which both South Korea and Japan are leading exporters — on April 2.

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.