“These are the risks and opportunities.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks at this early stage defines what the world can expect as his new government rolls into action the day after his inauguration on January 20, 2025. The highest in the concerns of Asia and the Philippines is the selection of Senator Marco Rubio for U.S. Secretary of State which will reflect part of Trump’s policies for Asia as our particular concern, but of course for the world in general as well.
Rubio has been such a China hawk that China officials have in the past years already sanctioned by the US twice in 2020 in a counteraction measure which Rubio sponsored over alleged (and clearly false, as the U.N. has not sustained accusations of genocide or ethnic cleansing) mistreatment of Uygur ethnic minorities in China, and a second for sanctioning mainland and Hong Kong officials for cracking down on violent 2019 Hong Kong protests.
Rubio has — if Asia Times’ top sinologist David P. Goldman can be believed, and I agree with him — has a less known side. In a response to Rubio’s appointment Goldman wrote, “Rubio brings China Realism to the State Department” pointing as evidence to a 60-page Rubio report “The World China Made” rationally analyzing China’s economic success apparently without demagoguery that he believes could be a basis for making a “grand deal.”
Goldman sees China hawk realists who detest China but recognize China’s headway. Rubio, the best-informed realist, writes in his report that “the United States has to make extraordinary efforts to stay ahead of China and should not delude itself that a stroke of the pen can hold back this technological behemoth.” A way forward then is a Grand Deal, ala the 1972 Nixon with Mao, between Trump and Xi, and Rubio a known China hawk can do a Kissinger without being tagged a “sell out.”
In July of 2024, Trump, in an address at the Republican National Convention, said, “’Right now as we speak, large factories just are being built across the border in Mexico’ by China to make cars to sell in the US… ‘Those plants are going to be built in the United States and our people are going to man those plants,’ he said, adding that he would otherwise slap tariffs as high as 200% on each car…” which was a clear signal the transactional Trump is ready to talk turkey with China.
This transactional potential augurs well for de-escalating the proxy-war mode the U.S. has imposed on the Philippines through Filipino proxies in the traditional political and security establishment. It will help decouple the Philippines from the U.S. war industry’s ramping up of war preparations in the region. Rubio did pitch for U.S. “commitment” to Philippine defense ties last July, but we know how these “commitments” go after seeing what is happening to Ukraine.
For many Filipinos, the US immigration policy under Trump will be a top concern with the reported 370,000 TNTs (Tago-Ng-Tago or Hide-And-Hide) Filipinos in America fearing deportation and families back home and consequently, the loss of remittances. The appointments of Tom Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy reflect the priority of the immigration crackdown on the Latinos streaming in from the U.S. south — not on Filipino TNTs.
For a long time, Filipino TNTs will have little to worry about as there are 12,700,000 other priority illegal immigrants that the U.S. will need to deport under much less costly and difficult procedures such as sending Mexican or Honduran farm workers across the border, before they come to the Filipino TNTs who are professional workers and need to be enplaned back across the oceans. That is why Philippine Ambassador Babes Romualdez’s call for TNTs to surrender was such a disservice to them.
While the U.S. is going through a transition again in its national governance for the nth time after the nth election and inevitably ending up to face the same endemic problems of inconsistency and contradictory national ideological convictions. This is engendered by the political contests themselves rooted in economic class conflicts that cannot be resolved without a social revolution, the rest of the globe is moving on with BRICS, the APEC and the G-20 going forward.
rpkapunan@gmail.com
