Asia’s potential trade hot spots escaping Trump’s glare for now

SINGAPORE (Feb 13): India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have largely escaped US President Donald Trump’s glare on trade, but he may yet come looking. The US runs trade deficits with all of them, in some cases quite big ones.

Trump’s exit from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, his attacks on the trade policies of Japan, China and South Korea, and a Republican push for tax reforms that would impose a levy on US imports from all countries are contributing to concerns that a protectionist era will hurt growth.

Countries that the US runs trade deficits with may be particularly vulnerable to attack. Peter Navarro, the head of Trump’s National Trade Council, and Commerce Secretary-nominee Wilbur Ross last year wrote a paper where they pinpointed America’s trade gaps as a cause for what they described as its “slow growth plunge.”

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