Trade war in focus at ASEAN summit ahead of Trump arrival

A key regional summit opened Sunday in Manila, with Southeast Asian heads of state grappling with the Middle East crisis and their own regional flashpoints and global leaders finding common ground over US President Donald Trump's trade war.

Trump is scheduled to arrive Tuesday, near the summit's conclusion, a visit that will include a meeting with the leaders of his fellow Quad countries India, Japan and Australia -- the first such sit-down of his second term.

But it was the US leader's tariff blizzard that Brazil's newly re-elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had on his mind Sunday in Manila.

"Brazil has learned an extraordinary lesson after the US decided to impose tariffs (on other countries)," he told reporters on the sidelines of the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.

"Instead of weeping or begging the US government ... to have pity on us, we decided to look for other partners for us to sell and for us to buy from," he said, noting his country's trade with regional states Indonesia and Vietnam had jumped 15 and 13 percent, respectively.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sounded a similar note at the summit a day earlier while touting a new Philippine free-trade deal and ASEAN trade talks he said had been "substantially concluded".

The two pacts were "part of a strategy of developing a dense web of reliable partners to create more opportunities ... and reducing our relative reliance on the United States," Carney said.

Lula told reporters he had met with Carney on the summit's sidelines, inviting him to make an official visit to Brazil, and that he hoped to double trade with Canada.

- 'Not for sale' -

Nearly 20,000 police officers have been deployed around Metro Manila for the summit, with progressive groups predicting a turnout of thousands on Tuesday for an anti-Trump march on the summit site.

Much of the uproar targets the US Pax Silica programme -- a supply-chain initiative designed to counter China's dominance in semiconductors and rare earths -- whose flagship Philippine project, a 1,620-hectare AI manufacturing hub north of Manila, threatens to displace Indigenous families.

US Ambassador to the Philippines Lee Lipton said last week that a widely rumoured November target date for a deal signing timed to Trump's visit was never in the works.

On Sunday, a crowd of about 200 protesters, some carrying signs reading "the Philippines is not for sale" and "Ban Trump!" clashed with police carrying riot shields who blocked an attempted march towards the summit site.

AFP reporters saw at least three of the demonstrators taken away by officers who placed them in a police van.

Unfinished business

Two issues that have vexed ASEAN leaders for years -- a languishing South China Sea "Code of Conduct" and their relationship with war-torn Myanmar -- look like they will be Singapore's problem when the bloc's rotating chair passes to the city-state in 2027.

Myanmar has been excluded from high-level ASEAN meetings since a 2021 military coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered an ongoing civil war.

Thailand, which shares a border with Myanmar and is leading the charge for closer relations, last week called for Naypyidaw's foreign minister to be allowed back into meetings.

Philippine foreign secretary Theresa Lazaro told reporters on Saturday there was "no easing" of the approach being taken with Myanmar, which faces an international ruling later this week on whether it committed genocide against its marginalised Muslim Rohingya minority.

Hopes of achieving a so-called Code of Conduct in the disputed South China Sea between ASEAN states and China during Manila's year in the chair, meanwhile, have also flagged.

A Southeast Asian diplomat involved in summit preparations told AFP he did not expect a code to be signed at the summit.

Lazaro indicated as much on Saturday, saying negotiations were "80 percent" complete.

"If it happens, then it's a small miracle," said Siew Mun Tang, former head of the ASEAN Studies Centre at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, and its coast guard has clashed repeatedly with that of the Philippines.

The row has reared its head at inopportune times over the Philippines' year in ASEAN's rotating chairmanship, with a July foreign ministers summit opening less than a day after Chinese and Philippine sailors engaged in a clash.

An ASEAN defence chiefs meeting last month saw Beijing send only an embassy defence attache, blaming "reckless" statements by Philippine politicians.

Manila later rebuked its own public officials over comments about China, stressing the need for a unified voice as the two countries negotiate.