Politics is, in the end, not about morality but about how people perceive their self-interest and whether they think a certain candidate will represent and fight for that interest. That is why Trump and the “localist” movement should be taken seriously, whether we like them and agree with them, or not.

The apoplectic response of the establishment Republican Party to Trump in some ways mirrors the denunciations by Hong Kong grandees of the largely young “localists”. It may be nice to sit around with friends who agree with your political position and denounce other groups who don’t agree with you, but if you are a professional politician whose job it is to hold society together, you should seek dialogue.

It worries me that people in Asia are woefully unprepared for the serious possibility of a Trump presidency. So far, all I have seen are sniggers and confusion about how this clown could come this far and the hope and wish that he will surely lose in the end. But right now, a Trump win looks more likely and Asia must prepare for it.

Part of the problem is that the American “experts” on the seminar and conference circuit in Asia are mostly, if not entirely, “friends of China” – academics and CEOs who have benefited from globalisation. Since they benefit from the current system, they tell Asian hosts what they want to hear, not about the “peasants” rising up in the US.

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Even if Trump wins, the Pollyannas assure us, he will not carry out his threats; it’s all just election rhetoric that will be forgotten later. After all, people in this part of the world have heard similar “anti-China” rhetoric in the 1990s from Bill Clinton, and, in practice, no economic threat emerged.

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Such cynicism, however, may be misplaced this time around. Those who look at Trump’s past realise that, as early as the 1990s, he had taken out newspaper advertisements to say that countries such as China had been taking advantage of the US on the trade front. Clearly, it’s something he feels strongly about. He may be factually wrong but he is not faking his views to get elected. If he wins, I dare say he would impose high tariffs on goods from Asia and want to renegotiate many trade deals.

Now is the time for the Asian business community to start reaching out to Trump to get a real handle on what he and his supporters think about this part of the world – and ignore the professional talking heads from the US who seek to promote “US-China understanding”.

In the 1930s, Americans made a similar error about China because they ignored the looming realities and preferred to listen to soothing messages. Chiang Kai-shek and members of his US-educated family charmed many members of the American senate and mass media, convincing them that the “Communist bandits” in the hills would be nothing more than a nuisance. Chiang’s cabinet had more Harvard-educated members than did president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s and so Americans believed the Kuomintang. We all know what happened. There were other voices, such as Edgar Snow, who wrote Red Star Over China, but such lone voices were ignored.

Even if Trump fails in his bid for the US presidency, the political forces he has unleashed will not go away and will lead to a fundamental reordering of US politics and, by extension, world politics. Those who snigger at Trump as just a TV reality show host do so at their own peril.

I was a student in the US when Ronald Reagan was elected and heard similar sniggers, with people asking what one could expect from an actor. Reagan had the last laugh when the Berlin Wall fell. Whether or not we like Trump and his views, they deserve to be taken seriously. The era of “localism” may be spreading around the world, be it in the US, Hong Kong or Europe.

N. Balakrishnan is a Hong Kong-based businessman