4 weeks ago
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February 18, 2025 | 12:00am
The Philippines still wants to maintain an economic relationship with China even as it tries to carefully navigate Trump 2.0 for a “mutually beneficial” defense and economic package with the United States.
These were among my takeaways from the conclusion of the recent two-day meeting of the US-Philippine Society in Manila from Feb. 10 and 11, the first under the second term of President Donald Trump who has been shaking up America’s global partners with his new trade tactics.
US-Philippines Society co-chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (JAZA) hosted the 2025 board meeting program, while co-chair Ambassador John Negroponte led the US delegation.
To beef up the current Philippine members, who, aside from Zobel, already include Manuel V. Pangilinan, Enrique Razon Jr. and Doris Magsaysay-Ho, the new members who were accepted to the group were Sabin Aboitiz, Helen Yuchengco-Dee, Josephine Gotianun-Yap, Federico Lopez, Christopher Po, Lucio Tan III and Manuel Villar Jr.
It appears clear that in dealing with President Trump, the Philippine government needs the advice of all our top tycoons who may be better at reading the mind of the very business-minded US president.
According to Ambassador Jose Romualdez, “President Trump is one who believes in having a mutually beneficial relationship with any country, including allies and that should be the tenor of what we will be doing in the future.”
The US and the Philippines, he said, are in the midst of arranging a meeting between President Trump and President Marcos. The meeting, hopefully, would result in an arrangement that Romualdez describes as one “where we have both economic and defense packaged into one.”
However, replying to my question on what our position would be if the US gets into a trade war with China, Amb. Romualdez was quick to assure that “we definitely want to continue with our economic relationship with China. There’s no question about that. Especially now, when it comes to climate change and what China has developed in terms of alternative energy, we have no choice but to work with them...and other countries as well on climate change. The US has withdrawn from the Paris climate accord on climate change, and so we are very much affected by that.”
Romualdez elaborated that “the administration of President Marcos believes that we have to continue to pursue alternative sources of energy for our own survival. On the case of other trade matters which involve the US with China, we definitely will have to just simply take a stand on the fact that if there is an alternative for us, of course, we would like to do it with all, like the United States, but it doesn’t mean that if the US has a trade war for instance, with China, that we too are involved in that one directly. So, again, on the economic front, it has to be really mutually beneficial for both countries and that is what we will continue to communicate with our friends in Washington, DC.”
Ayala executive Rene Almendras, who has been JAZA’s point man in the meeting, summarized the developments and achievement so far of the US-Philippine Society session this year. He cited three main points, “one, the opportunities for the investments in the Philippines are still good, and our friends from the US have expressed to us issues that we need to act on. An example of which is power supply, specifically the ability of the grid to handle new power projects, which is much needed for any investment in the country.”
The second main point Almendras cited is that “there are changes happening in the US government in Washington, DC. We clearly need to adapt to these changes. We are not going to be adversely affected, thanks to the efforts of Amb. Romualdez and the US-Phl Society in DC. But we also should not be complacent and we need to adapt as fast as we can. Finally, as I mentioned already, US engagement and investments in the Philippines have increased and improved, the challenge is to make it increase and improve further.”
But the best advice on how to deal with the Trump 2.0 administration came from Amb. Negroponte, “I’m not sure, I think it’s probably too early to tell how different this administration will be from the one that came to office in 2017. I guess one thing you can certainly say is they have acted very quickly and decisively on the number of issues at sort of breakneck speed before they even have all the members of the Cabinet confirmed. So you get more action oriented earlier in the game, so to speak. And I suppose that comes from the familiarity that they have with running a government in the President’s first term, but how different it will be over the medium or longer term, I think is still very hard to say, and as you know, I think this is the one challenge in analyzing Mr. Trump and his behavior, and I think, it was true then and it is true now, is that while it’s important to pay attention to what he says, it’s even more important to wait and see what he does, and then you spend a certain amount of time trying to figure out what is it that he wants to accomplish by the action that he has taken. Is it part of a negotiating strategy, or is it a deeply held view that he wishes to accomplish? I can think of a number of executive orders that have been issued that could be interpreted in one way or another, wanting to make a basic change right then and there, and the statements can be taken at face value. But on the other hand, you could say that a lot of these things could be part of a negotiating tactic.”
