Southeast Asian nations should embrace U.S. investment and trade to protect their economies from a predatory China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued while traveling in Thailand.
“Our investments don’t serve a government, and our investments here don’t serve a political party or, frankly, a country’s imperial ambitions,” Pompeo told the Siam Society in Bangkok Friday during a speech on American engagement with Asia. “The time is right to do more together, using the model that has stood the test of time, using the formula that’s made America a force for good in this region — permanently.”
Pompeo touted the U.S. private sector throughout the speech, but his economic talk had a clear geopolitical focus. He derided the idea that China is an economic juggernaut and defended President Trump’s trade war with Beijing while assuring local leaders that the United States will remain a powerful player in Southeast Asia.
“Ask yourself this, ask yourself: Who really puts the people’s interests first, a trading power that respects your sovereignty or one that scoffs at it?” Pompeo said. “The United States today has the strongest economy in the world, and our consumers are driving demand for your products. In contrast, China’s economy is entering a new normal — a new normal of ever-slower growth.”
Pompeo delivered his remarks one day after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, a regional diplomatic forum with global economic and strategic significance. The ASEAN countries stretch from Myanmar and Vietnam on the southern border of China to the Indonesian islands just north of Australia.
The 10-nation bloc is America’s fourth-largest trading partner, according to the State Department, and the waterways that connect the countries are some of the most heavily trafficked shipping lanes in the world. The region has been a key target for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an economic investment program that U.S. officials see as a tool for the Chinese Communist Party to gain control of ports and other infrastructure that its military could eventually use to threaten U.S. allies.
“Private investors have exponentially more money than any one government could ever bestow on any other country to build bridges, or ports, or electricity grids,” Pompeo asserted.
Trump’s deepening trade war with China has rattled investors in Southeast Asia, but Pompeo argued that the neighboring powers should root for the United States in that competition.
“China’s problems are homegrown, but President Trump’s confrontation of China’s unfair trade practices has helped shine a light on them,” he said. “All we want, all President Trump has ever asked for, is for China to compete on a level playing field with everyone, not just with the United States. This will benefit not only us but you and the global trading system as well.”
