’Shock. Frustration. Anger.’ Trump’s tariff letters roil Asian allies

America’s Asian trading partners are reacting to President Donald Trump's latest threats of tariffs with frustration and disbelief, after months of what they believed were good-faith efforts to make a deal.

“To give adjectives to the reaction or response, it would be, number one, shock. Number two, frustration. And number three, anger,” a former Japanese official said in an interview.

Trump unveiled letters to 14 foreign governments Monday — 10 of them from Asia — threatening new tariffs on Aug. 1 unless their countries made renewed efforts to broker deals. They landed with a thud in the middle of the night on the other side of the Pacific, where governments were not given a heads-up before the letters were sent, according to two people from countries that received the letters, who like others interviewed were granted anonymity to disclose private details of talks.

Conversations with six foreign officials, four former officials, and others familiar with the views of the Asian governments that received the letters revealed a shared sense of exasperation over Trump’s approach. It is poised to further sour the mood among more than a dozen Asian foreign ministers gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, later this week for an annual summit hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio will also attend.

“We have no idea what the hell he’s sending, who he’s sending it to or how he’s sending it,” said an official with a government targeted with one of Trump's initial tariff letters.

A White House official in a statement to POLITICO objected to the claim that they did not adequately give trading partners a heads-up. "There was a good faith effort on our part to transmit ... these letters via normal diplomatic channels to their intended recipients before we made them public," they said.

More problematic for the administration, Asian officials predicted the decidedly undiplomatic moves could undo years of efforts by U.S. governments to build stronger ties in the region, particularly with rising Southeast Asian economies like Vietnam and Cambodia which have long been firmly in China’s economic and political orbit.

“In the main meeting there will be polite smiles — that’s the ASEAN way — but bilaterally there’ll be a firmer message that the U.S. is creating a big problem here,” affirmed Scot Marciel, U.S. ambassador for ASEAN affairs during the Obama administration. ASEAN members include Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore. Six of those countries got tariff letters Monday.

Beijing clearly senses an opportunity to use the meeting to pitch deeper trade ties with regional countries spooked by the Trump tariffs. China wants to work with them to “defend free trade and the multilateral trading system,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Tuesday.

“I am quite sure that Trump tariffs will be pushing these countries closer to China,” the former Japanese official said. “In a sense, the tariffs are the greatest geopolitical gift to China. The tariffs would erode decadeslong efforts to pull these countries closer to the West.”

The Japanese government, for its part, took particular umbrage at the suggestion from one White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, that the administration “hasn’t received meaningful engagement from” Japan and the other countries receiving letters Monday.

Japanese Trade Minister Ryosei Akazawa “has been visiting Washington D.C. almost weekly,” said the former official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the country’s reaction to the letter. “If it's just saying that we're not saying ‘yes’ to the U.S. demand, that's one thing, but that is not lack of engagement. We have been fully engaged.”

Not every Asian official expressed the same level of outrage. Some greeted the latest set of threats from Washington with a shrug, as yet more Trumpian political theater. Others saw it as a three-week extension.

”It was just posturing, nothing concrete. Negotiations are ongoing,” said a Washington-based diplomat for one of the countries that received a letter Monday. “The U.S. is pressuring us to agree to its terms.”

And they roundly dismissed the notion that their governments have not engaged actively enough in the talks with the administration. South Korea and Japan have been having regular meetings with top Trump negotiators, including U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, ever since Trump first made his “reciprocal” tariff threat against their countries in April. But the negotiations have stalled over Trump’s demands that any deal include sharp increases in defense spending and opening their markets to U.S. automobile imports. Other smaller countries like Malaysia and Thailand have been actively seeking to deepen negotiations and offering to buy more U.S. goods as a sign of goodwill.

“We should not be lamenting Trump’s erratic behavior — it’s time for us to strengthen ourselves,” said former Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya. “So maybe we forget about the external market, especially the U.S., for the time being and regroup.”

Trump, however, isn’t backing down from the rhetoric, despite the blowback it’s drawn. The president said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the United States wants to have relationships with countries, “but in every case, they treated us far worse than I’m treating them.”

The White House is framing its decision to send letters as a means of shoring up meaningful engagement from the countries it contacted.

“We've got the leverage here,” a White House official said in an interview. When it comes to Japan and South Korea, in particular, “We just haven't received serious offers from either of these countries, which is why we don't have a deal with either of them yet.”

The White House is putting a particular emphasis in its talks with Asian governments on severing economic relations with China. In a preliminary agreement with Vietnamthat Trump announced last week, the president said he would set a 40 percent tariff on goods shipped from the country that did not originate there. According to a draft framework, the deal will also “establish favorable rules of origin” for each others' imports to reduce the transshipment of Chinese products.

That agreement was greeted with concern among other governments in the region, particularly China, which said in a statement from its Ministry of Commerce that the country “firmly opposes any deal made at the expense of China’s interests in exchange for so-called tariff exemptions,” according to a spokesperson. “We urge all parties to stand on the side of fairness and justice and on the right side of history in resolutely upholding international trade rules and the multilateral trading system.”

And it underscores the uncomfortable position Trump’s push to wall off China is putting other Asian countries in. Beijing’s trade with ASEAN nations totaled more than $900 billion in 2024, roughly double the value of trade the region did with the U.S. last year. China has also invested billions in infrastructure in Southeast Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative. Washington is pressuring Southeast Asian countries to not only block Beijing from using their nations as conduits for Chinese goods heading to the West, but also to join the U.S. in cracking down on Chinese companies trying to dodge tariffs.

But without any guarantee tariffs will remain off, and duty levels higher than the start of the second Trump administration, the latest threat has countries questioning whether a deal with the U.S. is worth spurning their largest regional trading partner.

“It affirms China's narrative that, ‘America is not reliable. America's far away, but we're next door and we want to open our markets,’” said Derek Mitchell, who was ambassador to Myanmar in the Obama administration.

Japan, a treaty ally and the United States’ fourth-largest trading partner, is larger and more independent, economically and politically, from China than many of its Southeast Asian neighbors. But the relationship with Tokyo remains crucial to curbing Beijing’s influence in the Asia-Pacific. And Trump’s seeming disregard for the long history of cooperation between Washington and Tokyo, as well as between Washington and Seoul risks fraying ties with both capitals, said Tami Overby, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group who advises businesses on trade issues in South Korea.

“We seem to be treating everyone the same, and they're not,” she said. “I think we have to acknowledge some countries are better friends.”

New South Korean President Lee Jae-myung's government has not reacted as vocally to Monday's tariff letter, but it has been heavily engaged in attempting to secure a deal ever since he was elected last month. The Trump administration's tariffs on autos and auto parts and threat to impose more on semiconductors and shipbuilding is alarming key South Korean industries, and the country has already made pledges to purchase energy and Boeing airplanes from the U.S. and to bolster auto production in the U.S. But South Korea's apparent unwillingness to boost defense spending, one of Trump’s key demands, has become a stumbling block.

Japan, too, has resisted U.S.demands to increase defense spending. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government bristled at the administration’s demand last month that it raise spending to 3.5 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product, from the 2 percent of GDP that Japan is already on track to spend on its military by 2027. And Ishiba has insisted any deal with the U.S. must lower Trump’s new 25 percent tariffs on autos and auto parts for Japanese manufacturers — something Trump has publicly pledged he won’t do. The president has also criticized Japan for not increasing its rice imports from the U.S. despite a shortage, as its government attempts to protect an industry that carries outsize cultural significance.

Ishiba’s failure to sway Trump to soften those demands — despite the Japanese leader’s efforts to strike a personal connection with Trump — may cost his Liberal Democratic Party in an upper house parliamentary election on July 20.

On Tuesday, Ishiba slammed Trump’s tariff letter as “deeply regrettable,” and Akazawa, the trade minister, spoke with Commerce Secretary Lutnick for 40 minutes Monday, in a discussion that was described as “frank and in-depth” by the Japanese.

The former Japanese official suggested the country might also reconsider the terms of an agreement it signed during the first Trump administration, in which it agreed to cut or eliminate tariffs on U.S. beef, pork and other commodities.

“The EU, Canada and China, who are not on the list [of countries receiving letters with new tariff rates] … all of them appear to have threatened that they would take countermeasures” against U.S. tariffs, the official noted, while most Asian countries, including Japan, have not. "This leads to the understanding that we have been too nice. … We may have to rethink whether being nice, polite, diplomatic, is something that would move President Trump. It appears that leverage is the only language that will be understood by the White House.”