[Note: This is the free preview within the dedicated podcast section of the ASEAN Wonk website, with the full version in a post published on December 23, 2025 available to our paying subscribers. This is not meant to serve as new content and is part of our free preview content within the dedicated website podcast section].
Note to Readers, Listeners and Watchers: ASEAN Wonk will be taking our usual annual break following this post, and we will return with our first post for 2026 starting January 4. Happy holidays!
INTRODUCTION
ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, where we bring you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I’m your host Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran. If you haven’t already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don’t miss our full posts.
Our guest today is Matthew Goodman, who previously worked on preparations for G-20, APEC and the East Asia Summit at the National Security Council and held various roles in government, think tanks, as well as the private sector. We’ll start our conversation talking about a number of geoeconomic developments, including US tariff deals and the regional economic agenda. Be sure to stay tuned as we go through a range of forthcoming developments as well into 2026, including on China’s hosting of APEC in 2026 and the U.S. hosting of G-20.
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2026 TRADE DEAL FUTURES AND INDO-PACIFIC IMPLICATIONS
ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the podcast, Matt, and let’s start with the elephant in the room which is U.S. tariff policy and the deals we’ve seen. We’ve seen some of the details publicized in terms of frameworks or statements for countries like Malaysia and Cambodia, but we also have ongoing Supreme Court decisions and proceedings that are coming out within the US as well. And the administration I understand has lined up a Plan B of sorts with various section authorities depending on where this goes. What do you think are the various scenarios that policymakers and observers should be thinking about headed into 2026?
Matt Goodman: Thanks Prashanth. It’s great to be here and happy to talk about these rapidly moving issues. So the first caveat I’m going to say is that it’s really hard to analyze this stuff, let alone predict it. Because that’s sort of a hallmark of the Trump approach, especially in his second term of being kind of maybe deliberately unpredictable and uncertain in his approach. And we’ll talk about this probably some more without a really coherent strategy. So this is really a question of pattern recognition as opposed to real policy analysis. I think that’s what you have to bring to these kinds of kinds of conversations.
And I would say that we now know that President Trump 2.0 is obsessed and focused singularly on issues around trade and tariffs. He’s been doing a frantic set of actions to put tariffs on here or tariffs on there on sectors, on countries, and using that to some extent as leverage to negotiate all these deals. And these deals have some interesting components, which we can talk about. But I think one of the things you touched on is, there’s a lot of uncertainty around them and how real they are and how much they’re actually going be implemented the way they’re written – to the extent they are written because some of them are not written down. And so this is just a pattern of behavior and action that is fast moving, uncertain, and really different from some of the more predictable things we’ve seen in the past in Washington, including Trump 1.0 where it was a little more predictable.
ECONOMIC STATECRAFT & EVOLVING INDO-PACIFIC STAKES
ASEAN Wonk: Right. And just to follow-up quickly on that in terms of how this fits into the broader notion of U. S. economic statecraft. In some of these agreements, we’re seeing things like purchases of certain U. S. goods, products and services, whether it’s LNG or aircraft. But there are other provisions that are more strategic about digital taxes and policies against U. S. companies, and provisions about the implications if countries negotiate agreements with others. One regional official I spoke to jokingly characterized this as unfriendly shoring, relative to friendshoring, allied shoring and nearshoring that we heard about from previous administrations. I guess the broader question from all of this is how this factors into broader U.S. policy beyond just President Trump, given that there’s work and thinking going into these agreements from the people and bureaucracies around him.
Matt Goodman: Yeah. A really good set of questions. First of all, one point I often make is that there’s Donald Trump and then there’s the Trump administration. I mean, those are really, in a way, two different things. There is always the president’s view which has been important in administrations. But in this case, he’s got a unique perspective and unique set of interests and priorities. He has unusual power over his own administration and broadly over Washington. And so when you look at what he’s interested in and doing, you have to somewhat maybe distinguish that from what the Trump administration is doing. And, I think, in descending order, what Donald Trump cares about is the big announcement, the ability to sort of say I’ve done some big deal that I’m sort of a big deal maker, and I’ve made some announcement that I can tweet or post at 2am with capital letters. That’s kind of what you start with. I think to the extent he’s really concerned about policy, he clearly doesn’t like trade imbalances and wants to try to use his superpower of tariffs to bring those down. And then there is this sort of reindustrialization and reshoring and trying to rebuild a kind of manufacturing capability here in the United States that for a variety of reasons has decreased or diminished over his lifetime. And he wants to go back to an era where we were producing more stuff. And so that’s a real significant policy point.
What’s not on my list there is some of the things that have now appeared, and this is where I am interested in the differences between Trump himself and his administration. Like in the US-Malaysia trade deal, there’s some new interesting provisions there. Ones that I am particularly interested in are the ones that sort of touch on economic security as it were, where Malaysia has ostensibly agreed to align some of its policies – maybe tariff policies, export policies, other policies with the US. And as you alluded to, to make commitments, frankly, not to do things with China that upset the US or hurt the US – it explicitly says that somehow jeopardize essential US interests, whatever that exactly means. All of that is interesting and new in trade agreements. Generally, it’s a sign that more of those kinds of issues of trying to get alignment on dealing with China is going to be a part of US policy going forward. I mean, it’s been a part of successive administrations on some level, but I think that’s an interesting thing to watch.
“All of that is interesting and new in trade agreements. Generally, it’s a sign that more of those kinds of issues of trying to get alignment on dealing with China is going to be a part of US policy going forward.”
And then it gets to the question that the point that I made at the beginning of this long response is that Donald Trump doesn’t seem so interested in those issues. I mean, he’s interested in doing more commercial deals and getting the big announcement, maybe in pulling in some investment here to the US. But he doesn’t seem as interested in his economic security issues. So it raises in my mind: is this his team? Has he enabled them to move forward with some of this stuff? Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, negotiated that deal, and he may be more concerned about these sorts of economic security and China related issues. And they probably have some sort of blanket blessing from Trump to go ahead with these kinds of provisions. Not that he cared about the detail, but because he’s in a kind of a push me, pull you sort of situation with China and Xi Jinping. And he wants to show that we’re being tough. And when China’s threatening us on rare earths, that we can do other things to get at them. So at least for now, Trump is endorsing the idea of moving forward with some of these efforts to align allies and partners like Malaysia, which, by the way, the US has had not easy relations with over many years on many issues. So it’s interesting that Malaysia went so far to respond on some of these issues. But I think it’s an interesting question to watch as to whether this is a very different sort of approach from the administration broadly and from what Trump himself is actually really concerned about and prioritize, which gets to: post-Trump, will some of this stuff continue or not? And I think it will is the bottom line. Not every detail, but a lot of this impulse is going to continue post-Trump.
EVOLVING REGIONAL ECONOMIC AGENDA AND APEC
ASEAN Wonk: Right. I wanted to turn to some of the outcomes we saw out of APEC from South Korea’s host year. We saw an adoption of a declaration, which doesn’t always happen, so we should acknowledge that. We also saw some outcomes in areas like demographics and artificial intelligence, which are important if you’re looking at geoeconomics in a region like Asia long term, where some of the countries, including in Southeast Asia like Thailand, have actually already begun to age. As somebody who has thought about APEC as a practitioner and then as a scholar as well, how would you assess the outcomes from this round of APEC, whether it’s a grade or a scale of one to ten, however you want to assess it?
Matt Goodman: Great. Well, first of all, let me just say that it’s wonderful to be in a conversation where you don’t actually have to spell out what APEC stands for. Here in Washington are probably five people who know what those initials A-P-E-C stand for. I’m one of them because I think APEC is important. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I think it is an important part of the landscape in the region; an important tool of US policy in the region if we use it right. So I actually pay more attention to APEC than most people do. I would say the outcome in Korea was not bad. I mean, considering that you had to go into this with pretty low expectations. I’m sure the Koreans did in some way as hosts. They were probably trying to avoid any major disruption. And if they got that, which they did, then they’d consider that a victory. You’re right. They got to a communique, which is not something that always happens at these events, and that’s significant. It’s less than three pages, which is a real accomplishment in itself.
And it does have some useful issues that set agendas. I always think these forums – the G-20, APEC, all of these big and multilateral forums – really serve broadly three purposes. They solve problems and really try to move an agenda forward on specific solutions – in the extreme, in a crisis like the G-20 was formed in. So it’s a problem-solving body. Secondly, even if it doesn’t solve problems immediately, it’s an agenda setting opportunity. So you alluded to aging, and that’s a good example. Korea has the worst demographic posture of any country in Asia or the world maybe with such a low fertility rate and an aging society, but every country is facing this on some level. Korea really put that front and center on the agenda. That’s important by itself.
People can be cynical about that because they say there weren’t any tangible agreements to do anything or to make more babies or whatever it is that you’re expecting to be done. But putting it on the agenda and then forcing conversations among bureaucracies within bureaucracies about how do we actually put some meat on the bones of these sorts of leader level objectives I think is important. So I give the Koreans credit for that. And then there’s the building habits of cooperation point in these forums where you get leaders together. Now, admittedly, President Trump didn’t stick around for the actual APEC meeting, but it was an excuse for him to get out there and have a bunch of important bilateral meetings, which broadly, I think, went pretty well, all things considered.
“So you alluded to aging, and that’s a good example. Korea has the worst demographic posture of any country in Asia or the world maybe with such a low fertility rate and an aging society, but every country’s facing this on some level. Korea really put that front and center on the agenda. That that’s important by itself.”
And so people often understate this purpose of these forums. But remember, leaders are kind of lonely people. They don’t have a lot of peers. They spend all day with a bunch of supplicants and people who want things from them or staffers, but they don’t really talk to their peers a whole lot. So these are real opportunities for them to get together, compare notes, tell each other what’s really important to them. And so I think the Korea APEC sessions helped to do that, and so I give the Koreans credit for that as well. And I think it’s a good thing that APEC made it through this year, and then we’ll see how it continues next year under Chinese leadership. And it’s always a little bit of a fragile undertaking: you’re never quite sure if it’s going to make it to the next level or next year. But I think it was a pretty good outcome for APEC in Korea.
MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS: EXPECTATIONS AND REALITY
ASEAN Wonk: Just to broaden it out a little bit, I’m also wondering – to your point about multilateralism in general and multilateral institutions – to what extent should we be recalibrating our expectations for what their role is in this environment of increasing geopolitical competition? Because the challenges you noted with APEC and other institutions like the G-20 are profound and even getting some of these outcome documents almost taken for granted a few years ago may actually be more prized now in this environment.
Matt Goodman: Yeah. Multilateralism is not fashionable certainly here in Washington these days. And more than that, Donald Trump and his administration are pretty hostile to even the term or the concept multilateralism. They want the US to be able to make its own decisions, not have to sit down and compromise and spend time talking to a bunch of other countries and kind of find the lowest common denominator. So there’s a pretty antagonistic view of multilateralism here in Washington. And other countries as well, I think, have found that it hasn’t delivered in the way that it was originally envisaged. I mean, take the World Trade Organization, which has not really been able to perform on any of its core functions of negotiating new trade liberalization or enforcing deals or even surveillance, which is the weakest of its functions. And a lot of countries recognize that. And that’s not all the US’ fault. In fact, we’re part of the problem, but we’re not the only ones that have made WTO less functional than it was envisaged originally.
I do think the G-20 has really suffered from not having real consensus – the kind of consensus that was there in 2008-2009 in the middle of a crisis when the US, China, others came together and did some pretty dramatic things to stabilize the global economy and the global financial system. All of that’s gone, and now there’s competition within the group. But the challenges remain. The global economy is still fragile. The financial system could be in trouble. It has many problems. We have climate change. We have pandemics. We have many other transnational challenges that require some kind of international conversation. And I think that’s what keeps people coming to the table, including the United States. I mean, it’s interesting that the Trump administration in fact – I am not sure why this is the case – has not withdrawn from the WTO or tried to kill it. We didn’t in the first term, and this is now the fifth year that Trump has had the opportunity to walk away from the WTO, and he hasn’t. And I’m interested in why. Apparently, we paid our dues, which I didn’t even hear about until just recently quietly. And so we’re still interested in the WTO as useful in some way to do something.
“I do think the G-20 has really suffered from not having real consensus – the kind of consensus that was there in 2008-2009 in the middle of a crisis when the US, China, others came together and did some pretty dramatic things to stabilize the global economy and the global financial system. All of that’s gone, and now there’s competition within the group.”
And the IMF and the World Bank similarly. Treasury Secretary Bessent has talked about them as useful institutions – maybe misguided or overbloated or whatever. He wants to reform them, but he hasn’t walked away from it. So in practice, I think even in Washington, let alone in other capitals, there’s still this impulse just because of the reality of the way the world works. There are problems and challenges that no one country suffers alone and no one country can solve alone. And so, you kind of have to get together in some way even if you don’t like the term multilateralism or you don’t like some of the commitments that you’re obliged to follow through on under the WTO or whatever. So I think it’s an interesting question of where all of this goes, and that’s a long conversation we can have if you’re interested. But I do think there’s sort of crosscurrents here over some of these multilateral forums. They’re definitely troubled and have a hard time making the case for their relevance and getting people to the table, but there’s still an impulse to because of the reality of global challenges to come to the table. So that’s an opportunity.
LOOKING AHEAD TO CHINA APEC 2026 AND COMPETITION FUTURES
ASEAN Wonk: Great. And looking ahead, one of the data points that people are already starting to look ahead to is that China is going to be the host country for APEC next year. That’s going to be followed by Vietnam the following year. Xi Jinping’s speech at APEC included all kinds of references to what has become quite customary for Chinese officials to refer to, like avoiding the law of the jungle and so on and so forth after the second Trump administration to almost a oneupmanship relative to the United States and trying to position themselves as the bastion of free trade even though China has its own challenges as well on that front. But it feeds into some of the anxieties about how China might utilize APEC during its host year. To what extent is this going to be about some of what you mentioned – agenda setting, broader challenges – and to what extent is this going to be more about a bilateralized notion of U.S.-China competition and APEC being a battleground for that?
Matt Goodman: Well…
[Note: This is the end of a free preview podcast, with the full version in an earlier post published on December 23, 2025 available to our paying subscribers. This is not meant to serve as new content and is part of our free preview content within the dedicated website podcast section].
