The trade war that U.S. President Donald Trump has escalated in his second term is a challenge for all Asian economies, large and small, in an era when the most populous region of the world is expected to drive global economic growth.
Export manufacturing and free trade helped transform China and other Asian countries into economic powerhouses over the past decades. Trump’s barrages of tariffs, aimed at compelling companies to keep or set up their factories in the United States, are rupturing trade agreements often made at great political cost to trading partners.
