Since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, most Indo-Pacific economies have largely acquiesced to a shifting and uneven set of US tariffs that appeared to track strategic alignment as much as trade fundamentals. That regime has since met a decisive legal check: in February 2026, the US Supreme Court held that the "reciprocal" tariffs exceeded presidential authority under emergency economic powers. Yet the wall has not come down. Washington moved almost immediately to reimpose broad tariffs under alternative statutes, confirming a pattern in which the instruments change but the coercive intent endures. China, meanwhile, has a long record of converting asymmetric interdependence into foreign policy leverage. As the tariff conflict escalated, Beijing tightened export controls on rare earths, then calibrated them rapidly, suspending some measures and retaining others as its bargaining position shifted.
Economic coercion is not new. What is striking is its growing prominence among the major powers and its use against strategic competitors and close economic partners alike. This prompts a genuine question: is the character of economic statecraft changing? Statecraft once combined carrots and sticks, incentives and coercion. Across much of the Indo-Pacific, the stick now appears to dominate. This issue of Counterpoint Indo-Pacific takes up that shift under the theme above. We frame it against the widening use of economic instruments in great power rivalry, from tariffs and market access restrictions to export controls, sanctions and other forms of pressure, deployed as tools of strategic competition.
In a contested region, the line between economic policy and national security is blurring, as states increasingly view trade, technology, investment and supply chains through a strategic lens. We do not, however, assume that coercion has become the new normal. One view holds that we are witnessing a structural shift in the international economic order, in which interdependence itself becomes a source of strategic leverage. A second contends that little is fundamentally new: major powers have long wielded economic instruments for political ends, and the liberal decades of recent memory may prove the exception rather than the rule. A third questions whether economic coercion works as a coherent strategy at all, since targeted states can adapt, diversify their partnerships and often decline to change course.
Across these perspectives, this issue asks how far economic coercion is reshaping the regional order and what it means for countries caught between rival powers. We are especially interested in the choices facing regional economies: how they can protect economic openness and strategic autonomy, build resilience to external pressure, and judge whether their responses should stay national or move towards regional and collective action.
Counterpoint Indo-Pacific (CIP) is a webinar and policy brief series published by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. The main objective of CIP is to bring together experts from across the region to discuss critical issues concerning the Indo-Pacific. Each issue will tackle one question from four different perspectives.