America’s Asian trading partners are reacting to President Donald Trump’s latest threats of tariffs with frustration and disbelief, after months of what they believed were good-faith efforts to make a deal.
“To give adjectives to the reaction or response, it would be, number one, shock. Number two, frustration. And number three, anger,” a former Japanese official said in an interview.
Trump unveiled letters to 14 foreign governments Monday — 10 of them from Asia — threatening new tariffs on Aug. 1 unless their countries made renewed efforts to broker deals. They landed with a thud in the middle of the night on the other side of the Pacific, where governments were not given a heads-up before the letters were sent, according to two people from countries that received the letters, who like others interviewed were granted anonymity to disclose private details of talks.
Conversations with six foreign officials, four former officials, and others familiar with the views of the Asian governments that received the letters revealed a shared sense of exasperation over Trump’s approach. It is poised to further sour the mood among more than a dozen Asian foreign ministers gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, later this week for an annual summit hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio will also attend.
