As the possibility of US President Donald Trump moved closer to reality on Wednesday in the wake of his win in the Indiana primary election, Asian policymakers were quick to downplay his impact on US-Asia relations.
Senior government officials, bankers and analysts said they were focussed on the state of the global economy and that a change of power in the US did not loom large on their radar screens.
Asked by Emerging Markets for his reaction to a Trump presidency, IMF deputy managing director Mitsuhiro Furasawa said that Asia could live with whichever candidate wins the election.
Sri Lanka’s finance minister Ravi Karunanayake was more straightfoward — and blunt — in his response. “It is strange to see America going into such political turmoil,” he told Emerging Markets. “I thought there was much more sanity in the system.” In any case, he added: “Hillary will win.”
Asked by Emerging Markets how a Trump presidency might impact US relations with Asia, former senior US Treasury and ADB official William Thomson said: “It’s very hard to say because Trump doesn't have at the present time an established team of advisors.
“He certainly is not as at the present time willing to take the conventional people from the thinks tanks, so it’s not clear at all what he would come up with.
“What he has said is often unpredictable and contradictory. I think that were he to become president — and I think it’s unlikely — then we would have to be braced for some shocks.”
On the possible impact on US relations with multilateral institutions, Thomson said: “Again it depends upon whom he would end up by appointing. I think the biggest shock would be for NATO. I'm not sure that he would even know what the World Bank or Asian Development Bank are.”
India’s finance minister Alan Jaitley noted that what candidates said during their election campaigns rarely had a strong bearing on “what happens when people are in government”.
Pakistan’s finance minister Mohammed Dal suggested that the US and its partners would “learn to work together” whoever was president, while the Indonesian finance minister Bambang Brodjonegro noted only that he placed his faith in the fact that the US was a “mature nation.”