Autonomy under pressure: Southeast Asia in the face of the foreign policy of the second Trump administration | utonomia sob pressão: o Sudeste Asiático diante da Política Externa do segundo governo Trump

Abstract

This article examines the foreign policy of Donald Trump's second administration toward Southeast Asia from 2025 onward, emphasizing its impacts on regional security, geoeconomic reconfiguration, and the crisis of the liberal international order. The research adopts a qualitative, exploratory-analytical approach, based on content analysis of primary sources (U.S. official documents, ASEAN statements, and regional authorities' declarations) and secondary sources (academic literature in International Relations and Political Geography), articulating empirical evidence with analytical categories drawn from debates on hedging, hegemony, and regional order. It argues that Trump's policy intensified strategic competition between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific, thereby increasing pressure on the states of the region. The analysis demonstrates that these states do not act merely as objects of great-power rivalry, but seek to preserve margins of autonomy through ASEAN centrality, diversification of partnerships, and strategies of selective accommodation. It concludes that Trump's foreign policy accelerated the transformation of the region into a decisive arena in the transition of contemporary geopolitics.