One cannot have a political conversation in Asian capitals today without getting pulled into a discussion about Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House. The Japanese have even coined a phrase, moshi-tora (“if Trump”)—shorthand for “What happens if Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November?” Speculation abounds about how a second Trump term might differ from Joe Biden’s first term, during which Washington focused on deepening alliance partnerships and building coalitions to compete with China economically and to bolster Taiwan’s deterrence.

Trump has been vocal about his desire to prioritize America’s narrow self-interest and do less to help U.S. partners. And yet many Asian analysts and political leaders evince a degree of calm over the prospect of a second Trump term. Over the past four years, the U.S. Congress achieved some bipartisan consensus on strengthening alliances, diversifying supply chains, and protecting U.S. markets against competition from China, and some leaders in Asia hope that reasonable lawmakers might guide Trump’s policies. Others believe that because they managed an erratic Trump during his first term relatively successfully, they can do so again.

But this confidence is misplaced. A second Trump administration is likely to be far more disruptive for Asia than the first one was. In Trump’s first term, his most radical foreign policy instincts were blunted by the presence of seasoned appointees; these figures will not be present in a second term. If Trump gets a second chance at the presidency, he is even more likely than before to see allies as trade adversaries, reduce the U.S. military footprint worldwide, befriend autocratic leaders, and challenge the norms that have thus far secured nuclear nonproliferation in Asia. Washington’s Asian security partners will need to become far more self-reliant for their defense as America becomes simply another transactional, self-interested player instead of the benevolent patron that has long supported the liberal order in the region. All U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, including close ones such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea, need to wake up to the reality that a second Trump term will bring new and challenging surprises.

To be fair, Asian governments are trying to prepare for another Trump presidency. Conference halls from Seoul to Manila teem with panels of experts predicting what his second-term policies might be. Former Trump officials and would-be appointees are the hottest speakers on Asian conference circuits. Asian embassies in Washington have set up special policy-research units to cover the presidential campaigns and identify and befriend members of Trump’s brain trust.

In some cases, Asian countries are trying to preempt policy disputes with a second Trump presidency. The Japanese and South Korean governments, for example, have started the process of renegotiating existing defense burden-sharing agreements to avoid having to contend with the exponentially higher, multibillion-dollar demands Trump might make on them. White House officials, meanwhile, are racing to institutionalize multilateral arrangements such as the myriad U.S.–Japanese–South Korean defense- and economic-cooperation initiatives that emerged from a key 2023 Camp David summit with Japan and South Korea; the Australia–United Kingdom–United States trilateral security arrangement on nuclear propulsion submarines (known as AUKUS); the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework geared toward building more resilient supply chains; and the Indo-Pacific maritime democracies trilateral between Japan, the Philippines, and the United States, so that Trump cannot undo them.

This legwork makes good sense. During his first term, Trump moved to tear up agreements that he believed “suckered” the United States. On the first day of his administration, he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement; he also obsessed over the United States’ relationship with allies that he perceived were free-riding on U.S. security guarantees while fleecing the United States economically with trade surpluses. Trump even required that all his briefing papers for a meeting or a call with a world leader........

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