Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: The ASEAN summit looms as frustration with the United States grows, Aung San Suu Kyi gets out of prison, Thailand prepares to take out a massive loan, and Bali faces a trash-tastrophe.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: The ASEAN summit looms as frustration with the United States grows, Aung San Suu Kyi gets out of prison, Thailand prepares to take out a massive loan, and Bali faces a trash-tastrophe.

‘Bare-Bones’ ASEAN Leaders Summit

A leaders’ summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is about to kick off from Thursday to Friday in Cebu, Philippines.

But instead of the usual circus, it will be a “bare-bones” affair, in the words of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The reason is the ongoing fuel crisis, which the conference will focus on addressing. And attitudes toward the United States, which precipitated the crisis with its strikes on Iran, are turning bitter.

When U.S. President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, many in Southeast Asia reacted with complacency or even a little pleasure. Trump could be unpredictable, sure—but his first term had worked out OK for Southeast Asia, with many companies relocating production out of China and into the region.

Lectures about human rights, commonplace in administrations led by the U.S. Democratic Party, were expected to drop off. And many bought the “Donald-the-dove” rhetoric, seeing his predecessor—President Joe Biden—as having shoveled weapons to Ukraine and Israel.

A little more than a year into Trump’s presidency, and the mood has changed sharply.

In the crudest terms, this is because Trump has started to affect Southeast Asia’s bottom line.

The effects of his 2025 tariffs were not as bad as feared, but they still shocked many.

This year, an influential survey found that a majority of movers and shakers in ASEAN said that if they were forced to pick between the United States and China, they would pick China. And that poll was conducted before the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28. While the tariffs were borne better than expected, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is threatening the region with serious economic damage.

Highly dependent on the Persian Gulf for its energy supplies, Asia has felt the bite of the fuel crisis first and sharpest. Countries in the region resent paying the economic price for U.S. foreign-policy adventurism. In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Thail Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said the war “should not have taken place.”

He also noted that the United States has not offered Thailand assistance dealing with the fallout.

Still,........

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