Editor’s Note: The following article is based on L. Alan Winters’ essay “Asia and ‘Reciprocal Tariffs’: Is Regionalism the Antidote?”, published by the National Bureau of Asian Research in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation. Asian countries are signatories to many trade agreements that have featured innovation, cooperation, and large coalitions, all of which may be important in preserving the world trading system from the Trump administration’s “reciprocal” tariffs. However, these agreements are not a unified system and are mostly shallow. In an essay for the National Bureau of Asian Research in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation, former co-director of the University of Sussex Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy Alan Winters explores the likely longevity of US trade restrictions and the need for a global response based on WTO rules.
In the unfolding maelstrom of geopolitical economic policy, the ascendant spectre of “reciprocal tariffs” from the Trump administration casts an elongated shadow across the sinews of Asian commerce. L. Alan Winters, with customary acuity and intellectual rigour, contends that while Asia’s latticework of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) may constitute an impressive cartographic web, “they are not a unified system and are mostly shallow.” This deficiency in depth renders them, he argues, insufficiently robust in shielding the region from Washington’s protean and oft-capricious trade diktats.
For decades, the Asia-Pacific region has indulged in what Winters describes as “prolific use” of PTAs. These have been driven not only by strategic necessity but also by a conviction in trade’s transformative capacity. “Asia has also been an innovator in trade agreements,” Winters observes, most notably in pioneering forms of “mega-regionalism” and pacts concerning digital commerce. Yet the question that he poses—whether these manifold agreements have erected a bulwark against American mercantilist volatility—yields a deflating rejoinder: “The answer, I am afraid, is no.”
The provenance of Asia’s regionalism is both storied and labyrinthine. The so-called “Asian noodle bowl”—a metaphorical representation of overlapping and entangled PTAs—evinces an astonishing degree of economic interconnectedness. However, Winters is quick to denounce the resultant “complexity or, less politely, muddle” that beleaguers actual trading enterprises, particularly smaller firms that lack the legal and bureaucratic muscle to navigate such convolution. Most of these agreements, though numerically impressive, are deemed “relatively shallow,” often riddled with exceptions and exclusions. Over “a quarter of the PTAs lack provisions on antidumping duties,” and “fewer than half contain provisions on financial services,” revealing a predilection for superficiality rather than structural integration.
The macrostructure of Asia’s regionalism is exemplified in two conspicuous arrangements: the CPTPP and the RCEP. The former, which accounts for 15% of global GDP, emerged from the ashes of the US-abandoned TPP. With its breadth and institutional freshness, Winters suggests that the CPTPP “seems able to accommodate a wide range of regulatory approaches” and is “a potentially significant player in 2025.” By contrast, the RCEP, though “the world’s largest trading bloc,” is mired in modest ambition, targeting zero tariffs on merely “65% of the bloc’s internal trade by 2040.” Winters wryly notes that RCEP “now seems unlikely to play a significant role in moving the trading system forward from its current doldrums.”
Digital innovation, however, provides a glimmer of avant-garde activity within the region. Asia-Pacific countries, notably Singapore and New Zealand, have “pioneered several innovative agreements” in the digital domain. With over 120 regional PTAs containing digital provisions and a constellation of free-standing digital trade pacts, the region is positioning itself as a fulcrum of 21st-century commercial praxis. As Winters asserts, “Digital rights and trade are at the heart of current trade policymaking,” and “Asia is significant in demonstrating that leadership does not need to come from the United States.”
Yet all these admirable ventures have found themselves dwarfed by the belligerence of US tariff policy. Trump’s administration, especially since his re-election in 2025, has unleashed what Winters describes as “a huge spike in U.S. policy uncertainty that has spread across the world economy.” The litany of tariffs—steep, whimsical, and often politically motivated—has destabilised the global trade equilibrium. In what was darkly christened “liberation day,” the US administration invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose a 10% blanket tariff, with elevated rates for 60 nations. China, being the primary bête noire, found itself subjected to duties as high as 145%, reciprocating with levies of 125% on US imports.
“This sorry tale,” Winters laments, has led to “widespread economic uncertainty, a large decline in business confidence, a (temporary) run on equity markets, increased borrowing costs for the U.S. government, and a material decline in the dollar.” In stark contrast to historical precedents—where upheaval spurred capital flight to the dollar—today’s investors exhibit “declining faith in the United States as the centre of the global financial system.”
Asia’s vulnerability is variegated. While countries like Bangladesh and Laos are seemingly shielded by limited openness and regional orientation, others—most notably Cambodia and Vietnam—are painfully exposed. The latter two, Winters points out, “are poor, are very open, export heavily to the United States, and disproportionately rely on goods for their exports.” Their substantial trade surpluses with Washington have incurred punitive reciprocal tariffs, thus exacerbating economic precarity. On the other end of the spectrum, Australia enjoys comparative insulation, with minimal exposure to the US market and a diversified export portfolio.
But the real peril, Winters warns, lies not solely in bilateral economic metrics but in systemic disruption: “The fragmentation of the world economy and the massive policy uncertainty…will affect incomes around the world.” The IMF’s April 2025 World Economic Outlook forecasted growth downgrades of 0.5 percentage points globally, with China, Japan, and the ASEAN-5 seeing even steeper declines.
The question of recalibration naturally arises. Can Asian regionalism offer palliative remedies or even a blueprint for global reconstruction? Winters’ response is equivocal. While Asia’s PTA architecture has engendered “calm and steady cooperation,” most of these agreements “have mostly plucked the low-hanging fruit.” The exigency now is for a transition toward deeper, more integrative accords, a process that is both “technically and politically” arduous. “Relief will require that PTAs are deepened or extended into areas that were previously excluded,” Winters writes, cautioning that this ambition “will be harder and slower to achieve.”
Nevertheless, there are enclaves of potential. The CPTPP, with its institutional maturity and commitment to multilateralism, “has the benefit of being a recent agreement forged in the shadow of a U.S. withdrawal.” ASEAN, though modest in economic heft, possesses a “long tradition of quiet cooperation and liberalisation” and could assume a mediating role. Even so, Winters is sceptical of quick fixes: “Signing new deals on similar terms may be useful, but again not as useful as moving to negotiate deeper and more inclusive agreements.”
The need for a global response transcends regional tinkering. At its crux lies the imperative to preserve the international trading system from being irrevocably warped by unilateralism. Winters counsels a meticulous, rules-based rejoinder, anchored in WTO principles. “Adhering to WTO rules is an essential part of a global response,” he asserts, advocating for restraint in retaliation and insistence on nondiscriminatory practices. He invokes Joan Robinson’s maxim that one ought not to “throw rocks into one’s own harbour” simply because a trading partner has done so, though he concedes that “retaliation reduces trade further and adds to the losses from the initial hit.”
The lynchpin of this strategy is transparency and multilateral coordination. Winters advises that nations “publish the outcomes of negotiations as soon as they are completed,” thereby subverting clandestine deals that could erode the multilateral order. Furthermore, he exhorts governments to “reject the United States’ pressure to join in its discrimination against China.” The notion is not to endorse Beijing’s trade practices, but rather to uphold sovereign judgement over Washington’s hegemonic overtures.
In the longer arc, Winters contends, the world must entertain a new multilateral round of trade negotiations, one “realistic about liberalising trade and updating WTO rules.” Importantly, this should be “open to the United States but not dependent on its participation.” Recalling the Uruguay Round, which originated partly to mollify American trade anxieties, Winters posits that a similar coalition—led by Asia and the EU—could shepherd the global order through this inflection point. “The Asian experience of innovation, negotiation, and compromise could greatly aid the process,” he affirms.
Yet Winters is under no illusion about the arduousness of such endeavours. The urgency of the moment, he implies, may necessitate interim pragmatism. “For now, in summer 2025, the WTO is all we have as a focal point for cooperation,” he writes. In this milieu, the onus falls on Asian economies—not merely as regional actors but as stewards of global economic rationality—to exercise “self-discipline during negotiations with the United States,” lest the trading system “disintegrate.”
In his final analysis, Winters issues a clarion call for collective, measured resilience. “The most important principle that should guide other countries’ responses is that a reasonably orderly trading system still remains at the end of the Trump presidency, whether the United States is part of it or not.” Though the path forward may be strewn with diplomatic thorns and institutional inertia, the preservation of the multilateral trade edifice depends on “guidelines that help countries achieve collective benefits by constraining behaviour at an individual country level.”
Asia, with its intricate trade architecture, innovative proclivities, and strategic centrality, stands uniquely poised to architect such a response—not as a panacea unto itself, but as a fulcrum for wider cooperation. In the end, the true test lies not in the number of agreements signed or the volume of goods exported, but in the capacity for principled leadership amid economic tempest. Winters’ essay is not just a diagnosis but a prescription—one that the custodians of the global order would do well to heed.
