How Asia’s economies could benefit from Trump’s global power plays
Countries such as Canada are looking to diversify their customers, particularly for oil and gas, with ‘a strong focus on Asia’, analysts say
Asia’s economies may unintentionally benefit from the United States’ confrontational foreign policy across several continents, even as analysts warn of near-term volatile commodity prices.
President Donald Trump has said the US wants to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, amid tensions between Washington and the European Union over his intention.
It comes after the US captured Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and said it would take control of the South American country’s oil industry in early January. Trump has also threatened to intervene against oil-producing Iran after thousands died in recent protests in Tehran and other cities.
Trump’s aggressive rhetoric about using “economic force“ to turn Canada into America’s “51st state” has also intensified worries about commodity supply chains, analysts say, even as it pushes resource exporters to rethink long-standing trade patterns.
Those shifts could ultimately work in Asia’s favour as countries look to diversify both suppliers and transport routes, particularly for oil and gas.
“In terms of natural resources and goods trade in general, I think Prime Minister [Mark] Carney has been eminently clear that Canada will seek to diversify its customers, with a strong focus on Asia,” Barrett Bingley, Asia regional director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, told This Week in Asia.