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SEOUL, South Korea — With America’s NATO allies reeling from the Trump government’s apparent U-turn on U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia, East Asian allies nervously are awaiting the administration’s full attention.
President Trump gave strong hints about foreign and economic policy in his lengthy address to Congress on Tuesday night. One core message was that U.S. allies and partners must beef up defenses, and another was that unfair trade practices would be hammered with tariffs.
Both messages put East Asia’s prosperous democracies on notice for big changes in relations with the U.S.
Elbridge Colby, nominated for undersecretary of defense for policy, emphasized in his confirmation hearing Tuesday Mr. Trump’s themes of “peace through strength and always putting America first.” These remarks generated high-profile responses in Tokyo and Taipei on Wednesday.
South Korean officials challenged the president’s arguments over fair trade but braced for higher tariffs from Washington.
Japanese officials appeared to be digging in against pressure from the U.S. administration over defense spending and contributions to regional security.
“Japan decides its defense budget by itself,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told the Diet. “It should not be decided based on what other nations tell it to do.”
Mr. Ishiba responded to widely reported comments from Mr. Colby on Tuesday. During a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing, Mr. Colby said, “Japan should be spending at least 3% of GDP on defense as soon as possible.”
NATO nations have long been challenged to meet a benchmark of 2% of gross domestic product for defense, though the Trump administration is seeking to raise that standard.
In 2022, during a long, slow reversal of its pacifist posture, Japan announced it would double its defense budget to about 2% of GDP by 2027. Questions remain over where Tokyo will get this money.
Yoshimasa Hayashi, chief Cabinet secretary of the world’s fourth-largest economy, told reporters in Tokyo, “What we think important is the substance of defense capabilities, not the volume or GDP ratio.”
Mr. Colby urged Japan to accelerate “the revamp of its military to focus on a denial defense of its own archipelago and collective defense in its region.”
In recent years, Tokyo has strategically refocused from the Russia-facing island of Hokkaido in the north to the Taiwan- and China-facing Ryukyu Islands in the south.
Marine forces are undergoing expansion, and bases have been placed over key straits that Chinese warships transit to enter and exit the open Pacific. Air and naval capabilities have increased notably with F-35 light carriers.
Taiwan’s opposition takes a hit
Taiwan’s defense spending was well below 3% of GDP goal, Mr. Colby said. “They should be more like 10%, or at least something in that ballpark.”
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, whose government has strongly resisted Chinese aggression, has vowed to raise defense spending to 3% of GDP but is facing powerful opposition from the Kuomintang Party (KMT). In January, opposition parties passed cuts and freezes to defense budgets.
Mr. Colby called that “profoundly disturbing.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican at the confirmation hearing, accused the KMT of “playing a dangerous game.”
The KMT responded by telling Taiwan’s Central News Agency that it supported a “moderate and effective” increase in military budgets.
New pressures on South Korea
Paralyzed by an ongoing presidential impeachment saga, Seoul issued no high-level response to U.S. statements.
Last year, Mr. Colby insisted that China is America’s key regional adversary and that the U.S. should not “break its spear” fighting North Korea. That, plus comments that Seoul should take “overwhelming responsibility” for its defense, led some South Koreans to question his commitment to the Seoul-Washington mutual defense treaty.
Asked whether it was time for Seoul to assume wartime command of its troops, Mr. Colby told the Senate committee, “I believe that President Trump’s vision of foreign policy involves empowering capable and willing allies like South Korea, and thus I support efforts to bolster South Korea’s role in the alliance.”
In 2007, a liberal administration in Seoul announced OPCON Transfer to assume operational control of its troops in wartime. That would remove them from the command of a U.S. general who heads the Combined Forces Command.
Conservative administrations, fearing that the transfer would trigger a reduction in the number of U.S. troops in South Korea, have slow-walked the plan. Some U.S. generals have said South Korea lacks the necessary capabilities, and huge questions hover over who would command a joint force in wartime.
Mr. Colby called OPCON Transfer “a delicate issue” and said he would review it carefully.
The South Korean Ministry of National Defense offered no comments.
Mr. Trump also singled out South Korea when discussing his more aggressive trade policy. Seoul officials said his criticisms were not based on the facts.
“South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher” than U.S. duties on South Korean imports, Mr. Trump said in his speech to Congress. “Think of that … four times higher, and we give so much help, militarily and in so many other ways, to South Korea.”
The U.S. and South Korea struck a free trade agreement in 2012 that cut or removed tariffs bilaterally. That agreement was renegotiated at Mr. Trump’s insistence during his first presidential term.
Seoul said Mr. Trump’s numbers were wrong. An official at the South Korean Ministry of Industry Trade and Energy told local media that South Korean tariffs on U.S. imports averaged just 0.79% last year and were set to drop further this year, according to stipulations in the free trade agreement.
Even so, South Korea recorded a trade surplus of more than $55 billion with the United States last year.
South Korea and Japan were alarmed by Mr. Trump’s announcement of tariffs on steel imports beginning March 12, and more anxiety lies ahead. Mr. Trump has signaled that he would impose tariffs on autos, a sector where South Korea and Japan are leading exporters, on April 2.
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