Annual summits of ten Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) and of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will be held later this month to discuss issues of economy, trade and global security. On the margins of these meetings are planned U.S. summits with China and India. Speculations about other U.S. summits in Asia (Russia?, Brazil?) are also going on.

The ASEAN meeting -- scheduled for October 26-28, 2025, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – is focusing on economic development, with emphasis on digital economy and energy transition, while trade policies are aiming at supply chain resilience and accelerated economic integration.

With an expected GDP growth of more than 4% this year, ASEAN is currently one of the fastest growing segments of world economy. Its foreign trade is growing at a rate of 8%, with intra-bloc trade advancing at a somewhat slower pace of 7.4%.

Founded in 1967 by five countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Singapore) to promote “regional peace, friendship and cooperation,” ASEAN has remained a flexible association where intra-group trade accounts for only 22% of their total trade transactions.

That is much less than the intra-E.U. trade of 50%, suggesting that ASEAN has to strengthen its institutional framework to open more space for economic integration in the years ahead.

U.S. should step up its “pivot to Asia”

Such organizational changes would enhance the effectiveness of technical measures to scale up digital economy and connectivity through joint infrastructure projects. In that context, China is likely to play an important role as ASEAN’s largest trade partner -- with last year’s bilateral trade soaring 7.8% to $982.34 billion.

The U.S. should also be more engaged with this rapidly growing regional economy. Indeed, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim confirmed on July 31, 2025, that President Donald Trump had accepted the invitation to attend the ASEAN summit Anwar will chair later this month.

Trade is an obvious issue for discussion. Last year, ASEAN ran a $229 billion surplus (an increase of 12% from 2023) on its U.S. trades of $572 billion (an increase of 13% from 2023). This year the U.S. has imposed an import tariff on ASEAN countries, ranging from 10% for Singapore and 19% for Malaysia to 40% for Laos and Myanmar.

Apart from U.S.-ASEAN relations, the Kuala Lumpur summit is also likely to feature a meeting between Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A $40 billion U.S. trade deficit with India in the first seven months of this year seems to be a relatively minor bilateral irritant, because Washington put that problem in a broader context of global political, security and military considerations.

Trade, for example, has become a problem because the U.S. considers that India’s large purchases of Russian oil and gas supplies are providing Moscow with resources to finance its military operations in Ukraine. Washington apparently believes that such deals enable Russia to resist pressures for American peace initiatives.

India, however, argues that energy purchases from Russia are economic transactions of vital importance for its economy. Delhi also sees that as its sovereign right that brooks no external interference.

Talk with China, compete, don’t fight

It, therefore, looks like the Trump-Modi meeting transcends purely commercial issues. And the two leaders’ agenda has a direct bearing on Indo-Pacific security and great power relations.

The result of that meeting will influence discussions Trump will have with China’s president Xi Jinping on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in South Korea, October 31-November 1, 2025.

That forum brings together 21 countries to discuss policy cooperation promoting economic growth, technological innovation, energy transition and climate change.

The highlight of the meeting will be a long overdue Trump-Xi meeting to review strained U.S.-China ties. Trade has already been discussed at the ministerial level, but decisions on tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade are still pending.

The data for the first seven months of this year show sharply declining trade transactions, with China’s exports to U.S. falling 19%, and U.S. sales to China declining 20.2%. That brought down the U.S. trade deficit with China 18.2% to a still hefty $128.6 billion.

Despite some symmetry in those numbers, huge trade imbalances still remain: China’s exports to the U.S. are three times larger than what China buys from the U.S. That’s a fact that cannot be explained by China’s claim that the U.S. is limiting sales to China on excessive national security considerations. China apparently refuses to increase imports of U.S. farm products.

Trade is a central issue in U.S.-China relations. And then, there are China’s red lines. The status of Taiwan is at the core of bilateral problems. Taiwan, according to Beijing, is a province of China that is off limits to any U.S. contacts with Taipei.

China’s contested maritime borders are also questions of sovereignty and territorial integrity whose violation is a casus belli. An unstable Korean armistice, dating back to 1953, is equally a matter of constant frictions, where the usual formula of “agreeing to disagree” may have run its course.

In view of all that, Trump and Xi have to find a mutually acceptable modus vivendi that would allow some normalization of trade relations.