In Asian media this week: Trade pact sealed with Vietnam. Plus: Dalai Lama at 90 – the institution will continue; Region’s newspapers show disdain for NATO; China, Pakistan setting up new South Asian bloc; Canberra, Beijing squabble over project naming rights.

As Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline approaches for reaching agreement on future tariff levels, the president predicted he could do a deal with India but he was not sure he could come to an accord with Japan.

“I doubt it,” he said.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said Trump had suggested he might simply write Japan a letter setting out the tariffs he will impose on their exports to the US – 30% or 35%, as opposed to the “Liberation Day” rate of 24%.

And India’s media suggested Trump faced problems in their country.

Late on Wednesday, Asian time, Trump announced an agreement with Vietnam – a 20% tariff on Vietnam’s exports to the US, duty-free entry for US exports to Vietnam.

The deal set a high bar for Japan, the Japan Times said, as in talks so far Japan had made no big concessions.

Trump Tariffs I: Japan – unique relationship no help

After 11 weeks of intense trade talks, Japan and the US have made no concrete progress. For three days in a row this week, Trump berated Japan for failing to make concessions to the US.

Trump repeated his complaints about Japan's supposed refusal to accept rice and cars from the US. He said he would simply end the talks and dictate the new tariff rates.

Japanese vehicles and parts are subject to a 25% tariff, the rate for steel and aluminium is 50% and the general tariff will rise from 10% to 24% if there is no agreement by 9 July – the end of the 90-day pause in “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Japan has insisted that the Trump tariffs be rolled back as a precondition to a deal.

Trump said he would tell Japan it was an honour to do business in the US.

Trump had labelled the US-Japan relationship only five months ago as a friendship like few others, according to a Bloomberg opinion piece published in the Times.

“Not even half a year later, is the shine already coming off what was heralded as a new ‘golden age’ of ties between the two nations,” the writer, columnist Gearoid Reidy, asked.

Japan had hoped it could avoid the unilateral imposition of tariffs because of its unique relationship with the US, Reidy said.

“When that failed, the consensus view was that Tokyo would secure an agreement rather quickly,” he wrote. “Instead, Japan’s chief negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, has been traipsing back and forth to the US…”

Trump Tariffs II: India – definitive red lines

Trump wants all trade barriers to be dropped in a deal with India, The Statesman newspaper reported.

He said he thought the US could reach agreement with India on “ the right to go in and do trade”.

In a separate story, however, The Statesman said the trade dialogue had run aground, on a thicket of competing priorities and political compulsions.

“The absence of an interim agreement speaks to a larger malaise in the bilateral trade dynamic – the dissonance between Washington’s commercial assertiveness and New Delhi’s cautious pragmatism,” the paper said. “At the heart of the dispute lies agriculture – politically sensitive in India and symbolically potent in the United States.”

The Indian Express newspaper said New Delhi had made a commitment to drawing definitive red lines in the interests of India’s farmers and livestock breeders.

It cited Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as saying India would love to have an agreement with the US – “a big, good, beautiful one”. But agriculture and dairy represented very big red lines, she said.

The Indian establishment was delighted when Trump regained the presidency, said Ravi Velloor, a senior columnist with Singapore’s The Straits Times and an expert analyst of Indian affairs.

But the euphoria was short-lived, he said. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Trump in February, he was greeted by Trump’s chief of staff, not by the president himself. Modi, it seems, had cancelled a meeting with Trump when on a visit to the US last September.

Jump forward to last month’s G7 summit: Modi, like other leaders, missed out on a meeting when Trump left early. Trump later called Modi and asked him to visit the White House. Modi declined, for complex reasons, but the excuse given was a prior commitment – in Croatia.

The bromance is cooling.

Trump Tariffs III: Vietnam – US exports to be duty-free

Trump’s tariff deal with Vietnam cuts the general tariff on exports to the US from a “Liberation Day” rate of 46% to 20%. But the US would impose a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transhipped through Vietnam.

The tariff on US exports to Vietnam will be zero and the Saigon Times reported Trump as saying in a social media post that SUVs, so popular in the US,  would be a wonderful addition  to product lines in Vietnam.

The news site also reported that Communist Party general secretary To Lam had a telephone conversation with Trump on Wednesday evening.

Bangkok Post said the deal with Vietnam was the third to be announced, along with the limited deals struck with the UK and China.

Vietnam had posed a challenge for the Trump administration, as some advisers saw the country as a strategic partner in efforts to counter China.

Chinese manufacturers operating in Vietnam breathed a sigh of relief when the deal was announced, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said, as it was better than had been expected.

Most Chinese exporters would stay in Vietnam as the 20% tariff was manageable, the paper said.

Tradition to guide choice of leader’s successor

The Dalai Lama turns 90 on Sunday, 6 July, and he is using the occasion to confirm that his followers will choose his successor in line with tradition.

Al Jazeera reported the Tibetan spiritual leader said this week a foundation he set up to preserve the centuries-old institution of the Dalai Lama would have the power to recognise his future reincarnation.

“I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” he said.

The 14th Dalai Lama had stressed his successor would not be born under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, The Diplomat, the Asia-Pacific online magazine, said in a feature article.

This was a direct rebuke to Beijing, the article said. China had insisted it had sole authority to approve reincarnations of Tibetan lamas. It had already installed its own Panchen Lama, the second-highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism and a key figure in identifying the next Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama was born in 1935 and was recognised at the age of two as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. In 1959, he fled to India after a failed anti-Beijing uprising and set up the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala.

“For Beijing, the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is a simple matter of control,” the story said. “By installing a pliant successor, the Chinese Government hopes to neutralise the Tibetan independence movement and confirm its authority over the region."

The article quoted Dibyesh Anand, a professor of international relations at London’s University of Westminster, as saying recognition of the future Dalai Lama was not just a spiritual transition, it was a geopolitical inflection point.

“Beijing will use the ‘one-China formula’,” he said. “It will demand all states recognise Beijing’s candidate as the ‘real Dalai Lama’. “[But] Western states, Japan, India and some other countries are highly unlikely to give in.”

Shaky Western groupings seen as irrelevant

Influential Asian media outlets have shown their disdain for NATO and the G7 in the wake of last month’s meetings of the shaky Western institutions.

South China Morning Post ran a commentary with a headline referring to “NATO chaos” and “irrelevant Europe”.

The piece, written by Finbarr Bermingham, the paper’s specialist reporter on Europe-China relations, said the world watched on as European leaders fawned over Donald Trump to try to keep him engaged with NATO.

He quoted a frustrated European diplomat as saying: “Europe is completely irrelevant – I think even they themselves stopped pretending that they matter.”

The sentiment was echoed in an opinion piece published by The Jakarta Post. It said June, 2025 would be remembered as a watershed, marking the death of the multilateral approach to global governance.

The piece, written by Harold James, an international affairs professor at Princeton University, and distributed by Project Syndicate, the expert writers’ group, said the US did not bother consulting NATO members before bombing Iran’s nuclear sites.

“On the contrary, [Trump] left the G7 meeting early… to launch the mission,” James said. “Existing institutions, especially those built on the idea of ‘the West’ (such as NATO and the G7), no longer matter.”

India’s The Statesman noted the NATO meeting pledged to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP. But this involved a compromise – splitting the target between 3.5% for core defence spending and 1.5% for security infrastructure.

“While this fudge enables broader participation, it also dilutes the clarity and urgency of the commitment,” the paper said.

NATO had responded to Trump’s demands, but only about 20 of the 32 member nations had reached the present benchmark of spending 2% of GDP on defence, The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in an editorial. It was not clear if NATO countries could achieve the new goal.

Japan’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defence was set because it matched the old NATO standard.

“There are reports that Washington has informally asked the government to set a specific numerical goal of 3.5%,” the editorial said. “That can only be described as an outrageous request.”

The Japan Times published an op-ed by British journalist and military historian Max Hastings, saying the NATO summit offered flattery to the US guest of honour in an unprecedented fashion.

Leaders who might have wondered what life was like under a Roman emperor now knew from experience, Hastings wrote. “They are obliged to abase themselves, to pander, to profess assent when many dissent.”

But the NATO leaders had an honourable purpose, he said – to save Ukraine and to save NATO.

“Just as Trump has no respect for others, so the rest of us must, I suppose sacrifice our self-respect to him,” Hastings wrote. “If it helps save Ukraine, it will be worth it.”

New Delhi the odd man out in regional blocs

China and Pakistan are working to set up a new South Asian political and economic bloc, likely at the expense of India.

Pakistan’s The Express Tribune newspaper said discussions between Islamabad and Beijing were well-advanced. The new organisation would promote greater regional engagement through increased trade and connectivity.

A recent meeting between China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, held in Kunming, discussed inviting other countries to join the proposed grouping.

The paper said India would be asked to join but it was unlikely to accept the invitation.

The new forum would replace the now-defunct South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, which consisted of India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and once was dubbed the EU for South Asia.

The group held its last summit 10 years ago. Pakistan was to have hosted a summit in 2016 but India boycotted the meeting following a terrorist attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir.

India found itself a misfit in other regional groupings, such as the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, the paper said. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the last two SCO summits.

The Indian Express newspaper said India last month refused to sign the joint statement of an SCO defence ministers’ meeting as it had omitted any reference to April’s Kashmir terrorist attack. India insisted the statement should mention the attack, but was blocked by Pakistan.

The paper said the organisation was dominated by China and Beijing would protect the interests of Pakistan, its all-weather ally.

“As China rises to be a great power, its protective cover over Pakistan has only become stronger,” the paper said in an editorial. “The recent trilateral meeting that Beijing convened with Pakistani and Bangladeshi officials in Kunming is a sign of things to come.”

Official paper slams Australia’s ‘Monroe Doctrine mentality’

A new front has been opened in the squabbles between Canberra and Beijing – this time over naming rights for development projects in the Pacific Islands.

Australia says China is stealing the credit for international projects. China says Australia has a Monroe-Doctrine mentality towards the Pacific countries (the Monroe Doctrine being the 200-year-old view that any external interference in the affairs of American countries is a hostile act against the US).

Pat Conroy, Australia’s Minister for the Pacific, sparked the spat when he complained that local politicians attending the launch of an airport upgrade project in Bougainville wore hard hats bearing the logo of a Chinese company.

The project is funded by the Asian Development Bank and the Chinese company is carrying out the work.

The Guardian, in a long and earnest report, quoted Conroy as saying the “branding” of multilateral projects was a source of frustration for Australia.

“It’s not Chinese assistance,” Conroy said. “People driving past would assume it’s funded by China because you see Chinese state-owned branding everywhere.”

Global Times, an official Beijing newspaper, took pot shots at Conroy with two commentaries on his complaint.

In one, it said Conroy’s complaint reflected Australia's unease with its diminishing dominance of the South Pacific. “Even legitimate co-operation by other countries is easily interpreted by Canberra as a challenge,” the paper said.

In the second piece, Global Times said Australian politicians indulged in zero sum calculations of "influence"  while overlooking the development needs of Pacific Island countries.

“For Pacific Island countries, what truly matters is tangible benefits and progress from international co-operation,” the commentary said. “Australia’s anxiety over influence, while neglecting the most urgent development needs of these countries, is clearly putting the cart before the horse.”

 

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.