Trump to flex muscles on Asia tour after midterms losses

After his party suffered a midterms hammering, President Donald Trump faces a new challenge: proving he is still the boss of US foreign policy on the global stage.

With Trump politically hamstrung as he enters the remaining two-year ‘lame duck’ period of his White House tenure, world leaders may be quietly wondering how to leverage the new balance of power in Washington.

The 80-year-old Republican heads to the ASEAN summit in the Philippines and APEC summit in China from a radically transformed and hostile political landscape at home after the Democrats seized both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Constitutionally banned from seeking a third term in the 2028 presidential race, the unpredictable billionaire could be all the more inclined to focus his energy on the international stage.

“After bad midterms, this is how presidents reset,” Edgard Kagan, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told a news briefing.

Iran, trade, China

That is especially true for Trump on his Asian tour, where he is unlikely to be pressed publicly on domestic politics.

China has described the midterms as an “internal affair” and said it is “willing to continue working” with the United States after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress.

But the power shift in Washington will still be on leaders’ radars, said Joshua Kurlantzick, an expert in Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“In private, many (Asian) leaders are relieved,” Kurlantzick wrote in an article this month.

“The Iran war has been particularly challenging for the United States’ Asian partners and allies, and they hope that after the midterm results US President Donald Trump’s decision-making on the issue will become more predictable.” Trump has said several times since the midterms that renewed fighting between the US and Iran is unlikely.

A Democratic-controlled Congress could also take a tougher stance towards China, Kurlantzick added, backtracking on the Trump administration’s “soft approach” to Beijing that has sparked unease among US allies in Asia.

Leaders in the world’s largest continent are also hoping to see Democrats push back on Trump’s barrage of tariffs on trading partners, which have stung Asian economies heavily reliant on exports.

Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries has urged Congress to reassert its authority over US trade policy.

The Democrats will not get an easy ride in undoing Trump’s policies, though.

The president enjoys broad authority over trade and holds veto power over congressional legislation — which he has vowed to use.

High-profile meeting

Trump relishes dramatic gestures and foreign policy provides an ideal arena for high-profile meetings, such as with Chinese and Russian leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

Trump told reporters this week he expects to meet Xi and Putin at the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, scheduled for November 18-19.

The president said “denuclearisation” and ending the war in Iran would be on the agenda.

But the bigger goal for Trump may well be a single photo of himself standing with the two other leaders he views as his great power equals, said Kurt Campbell, chair of The Asia Group and a senior diplomat during the Biden administration.

“I think in many respects this could be ‘the meeting is the message’,” Campbell said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who watched in horror as the White House appeared to pivot towards Moscow this year, has warned against a “Yalta 2.0,” referring to Western leaders dividing Europe with the Soviet Union in 1945.

Victor Cha, president of geopolitics and foreign policy and Korea chair at CSIS, said the Republicans’ midterm defeat meant a high-profile meeting was all the more likely.

“One that he (Trump) has personally staked a lot of time over two terms has been on North Korea,” Cha said.

“There’s nobody else in the US government that makes policy on North Korea except the president, so I think that he’ll be focused on that sort of legacy issue”.