Trump Impact

The Republican candidate Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on November 8 in a spectacular culmination of an explosive, populist and polarizing presidential campaign.

The surprise and shocking outcome defied late polls showing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge. The win was stunning as Trump, during his campaign, ignored conventions of common decency, employing casual vulgarity and raining personal humiliation on his political opponents and critics in the media.

Trump has delivered perhaps the greatest shock to the American political system in modern times and opened the door to an era of extraordinary political and even economic uncertainty not only at home but also around the globe, including Southeast Asia.

The Republican party has for decades been pro-business, and in favour of free trade. But that's changed with Donald Trump, who has equated American "economic independence"with getting out of long-standing trade arrangements.

Tapping into economic discontent, Trump has argued for protectionism and asserted that decades of free-trade policies were responsible for the collapse of the American manufacturing industry.

He has been feeding on the perception among many Americans that globalisation has brought more pain than gain, for example, by bringing cheap consumer goods into the country, costing domestic jobs and depressing wages. Outsourcing of jobs to cheaper markets has also been a concern.

Against that backdrop, Trump's stance on trade is perhaps the clearest of his economic policies. Trump's economic proposals fall into four broad categories: trade and immigration, tax reform, spending and regulatory change.

According to Dr Suhaimi Rashid, director at Nusantara Research Foundation, there is no doubt that Asia is most worried about Trump's trade protectionism as exports make up a quarter of Asia's GDP and a fifth of them go to the United States.