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Trump’s geopolitics could favor India, but trade ties may face turbulence

In India, there are expectations that strategic ties with the United States will deepen during President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. But New Delhi is bracing for pressure on trade ties with its biggest trading partner. From New Delhi, Anjana Pasricha reports.
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Manhattan artist invites Americans to write postcards to US president

Since 2004, former New York Times editor and now artist Sheryl Oring has been giving Americans a chance to speak their truth to the world. Dressed in 1950s secretary attire, she invites the public to speak their mind and records it on her vintage typewriter as part of a project called, “I Wish To Say.” Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov
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Cabinet nominees targeted with threats, Trump spokesperson says

WASHINGTON — Several of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees and appointees were targeted with “violent threats,” including bomb threats and “swatting,” a spokesperson for the U.S. president-elect said Wednesday.

The threats were made Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, and law enforcement and authorities acted quickly to ensure the safety of those targeted, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Leavitt did not say who was targeted, and she did not elaborate on the nature of the apparent threats. Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Leavitt said the attacks “ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting'” — when a false crime is reported to induce a heavy, armed police response at someone’s home.
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Trump picks vaccine skeptic to lead top US public health department

President-elect Donald Trump says he intends to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy disagrees with much of the scientific community on subjects including vaccines and HIV/AIDS. VOA’s Anita Powell has our story.
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Promise and peril for Southeast Asia in Trump’s tariff talk

BANGKOK — Southeast Asia could see a new wave of factories moving in from China to evade the soaring tariffs U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has proposed to impose on the world’s second-largest economy, trade experts tell VOA.

But the trade surpluses the region has built up with the United States and its heavy use of Chinese inputs for its own exports may blunt the benefits, they add.

A number of firms with factories in China, both Chinese and foreign owned, moved their plants to Southeast Asia to skirt the tariffs Trump imposed on the country — as high as 25% on some goods — during his first term from 2017 to 2021. For his second term, which starts in January, Trump has threatened to push tariffs on all imports from China up to 60%.

If that happens, “the speed of relocation will increase, and we will almost certainly now be looking at a world of bifurcated supply chains,” said Jayant Menon, a senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“What that means is a world where most important manufactured goods are produced not once but twice using two sets of supply chains,” he added, one for the U.S. and possibly European markets and another for everyone else.

And whereas the first wave of relocations mostly brought Southeast Asia factories hungry for lots of cheap labor, he said the second could bring in factories that rely more on equipment, technology and other capital for making machines, electronics, cars and the like.

“Countries that can closely replicate the costs and conditions in China will benefit, and at the moment a lot of those countries are in Southeast Asia,” Menon said. “Other countries can benefit if they respond to this opportunity, but at the moment Southeast Asia is the closest competitor.”

Aat Pisanwanich, an associate professor at Thailand’s Center for International Trade Studies, agreed.

Facing even higher U.S. tariffs than before, factories in China will “come to Thailand and other ASEAN countries more than [during] Trump 1,” he said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and to Trump’s first term.

Memon said most of the factories that left China for Southeast Asia after Trump’s first round of tariffs settled in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and that those fleeing a second would follow suit. He added that Cambodia and Laos — both very close with China — as well as Indonesia could start to attract more interest as well.

Some of the sub-region’s largest industrial park developers and operators have reportedly begun preparing for an expected influx already by expanding their sales teams and hiring more Chinese speakers.

But trade experts say Trump’s take on tariffs, and on international trade in general, also poses risks for Southeast Asia that could dull, or even outstrip, the potential rewards.

Trump has repeatedly railed against the trade surpluses many countries besides China have built up with the U.S. and suggested bringing them down with higher tariffs on their goods as well, or with other trade restrictions.

That could prove problematic for many countries in Asia, and Vietnam especially, says Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation, a Singapore-based research group focused on sustainable global trade.

Trump called Vietnam “almost the single worst abuser” of the global trade system in 2019, when the country’s annual trade surplus with the U.S. stood at $55.8 billion. It has soared well past $100 billion since then.

“That’s put Vietnam quite high up in the crosshairs for retaliation this time, and that makes it a less popular location for firms because you don’t want to move out of China into Vietnam, only to find yourself hit with more tariffs and other kinds of trade restrictions because you’re now in Vietnam and they’re trying to reset the trade balance,” said Elms.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand all now have trade surpluses with the U.S. in the tens of billions of dollars as well.

The other major risk the region faces, experts say, is the growing attention the United States is paying to imports not only from China but from anywhere else with a large share of Chinese inputs, and the added trade curbs they too might face in Trump’s second term.

“That would present a real problem for Southeast Asia, because you can move manufacturing — you can sew a T-shirt in the region, you can make a phone case in the region, whatever, that goes to the United States — but a lot of the raw materials, parts and components in those products, whether it’s fabrics or plastics or screws or whatever it is that’s in the product, is imported from China,” said Elms.

Aat, of the Center for International Trade Studies, said factories that move to Southeast Asia to make exports but continue to draw heavily on Chinese inputs also crowd out producers across the sub-region that could be supplying them instead, leaving local economies with little to gain from their arrival.

And even if Southeast Asian countries avoid the added U.S. tariffs or trade curbs many fear, they may still face the 10%-20% levy Trump has proposed imposing on all U.S. imports across the board.

Elms says it’s also not clear how much of what Trump has said about tariffs he will actually follow through on, and how quickly, making the choice firms will face on whether to move out of China all the more difficult.

Some of them will be “dusting off” the relocation plans they shelved after Trump left office in 2021 for another look now that he is headed back to the White House, she said.

“Whether they execute those is still, I think, an open question,” she added. “There are so many factors that matter, but there’s a reason why firms are so heavily located in China, and it’s because China just continues to have a speed and a scale that is hard for anywhere else to match.”

Rather than move, Elms said some of those firms may end up choosing instead to absorb higher tariffs, if they can, or to focus on other markets besides the U.S.

While that could give regional trade within Asia a boost, Aat and others fear it will flood Southeast Asia with cheap Chinese goods that undercut local producers.

All three experts said Trump’s tough talk on tariffs ultimately holds more peril than promise for the countries of the region.

“In the short term, of course they will benefit from the massive relocation, if there’s an increase in this relocation,” said Menon. “But eventually, as these things work themselves out, this is not going to be very beneficial.”
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 Trump announces picks for economic, health posts

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced a set of economic advisers he wants to appoint for his administration, including international trade attorney Jamieson Greer as his pick to be the U.S. trade representative.

Greer served in Trump’s first administration as the chief of staff to the trade representative, and Trump said Tuesday that Greer played a key role in both imposing tariffs on China and in the creation of a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Trump said Kevin Hassett is his choice to lead the White House National Economic Council.

Hassett led the Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s previous term. Trump said in the new role, Hassett would work to “renew and improve” a set of tax cuts implemented in 2017 and “will play an important role in helping American families recover from the inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration.”

Trump also announced Tuesday several health-related nominees, including his choice of health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Bhattacharya was a sharp critic of lockdowns and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump said Bhattacharya will work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”

“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Trump said.

Another nomination announced Tuesday was Trump’s pick of former HHS official Jim O’Neill to serve as the agency’s deputy secretary.

Trump also said he was nominating private investor John Phelan to serve as secretary of the Navy.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump’s transition team announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Biden administration about the process of starting to work with federal agencies.

A statement from Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, said, “This engagement allows our intended Cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power.”

Wiles’ announcement said the transition will use only private funding, and the donors will be disclosed to the public.

The Trump-Vance transition team will not use government offices or technology, Wiles said. She added that the transition has an existing ethics plan and “security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight.”

The signing of the MOU means that teams from the transition will “quickly integrate directly into federal agencies and departments with access to documents and policy sharing,” Wiles’ announcement said.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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