The goals of President Donald trump’s East Asia and Pacific Strategy is to win the economic future, prevent military confrontation leading from a position of strength.
President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China, encouraging American business to invest in China, and outsourcing our manufacturing to China, America would facilitate China’s entry into the so-called “rules-based international order.”
This did not happen.
China got rich and powerful, and used its wealth and power to its considerable advantage.
The Indo-Pacific is already the source of almost half the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity, and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century.
President Trump signed major agreements during his October 2025 travels that further deepen America’s powerful ties of commerce, culture, technology, and defense, and reaffirm U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Since the Chinese economy reopened to the world in 1979, commercial relations between our two countries have been and remain fundamentally unbalanced. What began as a relationship between a mature, wealthy economy and one of the world’s poorest countries has transformed into one between near-peers, even as, until very recently, America’s posture remained rooted in those past assumptions.
Our ultimate goal is to lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality. Importantly, this must be accompanied by a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific.
The United States must work with its treaty allies and partners—to counteract predatory economic practices and use our combined economic power to help safeguard our prime position in the world economy and ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power.
The U.S. must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States.
There is, rightly, much focus on Taiwan, partly because of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters.
Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy. Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.
The U.S. will also maintain its longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
America will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain. But the American military cannot do this alone.
Preventing conflict requires a vigilant posture in the Indo-Pacific, a renewed defense industrial base, greater military investment from its allies.
President Trump is committed to the security and prosperity of America and its East Asia partners.
America's East Asia Strategy
A Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-15J assigned to the 304th Tactical Fighter Squadron, conducts aerial refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 909th Air Refueling Squadron over the Pacific Ocean, Oct. 1, 2025.