Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is set to meet United States President Donald Trump this week, with hopes of securing a more favorable trade deal for the Philippines. The meeting comes as the US is set to impose 20 percent tariffs on goods from the Philippines, starting August 1. Marcos will be the first Southeast Asian leader to meet Trump during the US leader’s second term.
According to Marcos, the focus of the meeting will be on security and defense, as well as trade. “We will see how much progress we can make when it comes to the negotiations with the United States concerning the changes that we would like to institute to alleviate the effects of a very severe tariff schedule on the Philippines,” Marcos said in a speech before leaving Manila.
The US had a deficit of nearly $5 billion with the Philippines last year on bilateral goods trade of $23.5 billion. Trump has already struck trade deals with two of Manila’s regional partners, Vietnam and Indonesia, driving tough bargains in negotiations even with close allies that Washington wants to keep onside in its strategic rivalry with China.
Gregory Poling, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Marcos might be able to do better than Vietnam, with its agreement of a 20 percent baseline tariff on its goods, and Indonesia at 19 percent. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement of a deal with the Philippines at a lower rate than those two,” Poling told Reuters.
Marcos visited the Pentagon on Monday morning for talks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and will see Secretary of State Marco Rubio later in the day, before meeting Trump at the White House on Tuesday. He will also meet US business leaders investing in the Philippines. Philippine officials say Marcos’s focus will be on economic cooperation and Manila’s concerns about Trump’s tariffs.
The meeting between Marcos and Trump will also discuss defense and security, and Philippine Assistant Foreign Secretary Raquel Solano said the Philippine president would be looking to further strengthen the longstanding defense alliance. The Philippines and the US have closely aligned their views on China, and Poling said it was notable that Rubio and Hegseth made sure their Philippine counterparts were the first Southeast Asian officials they met.
With the Philippines facing intense pressure from China in the contested South China Sea, Marcos has pivoted closer to the US, expanding access to Philippine military bases amid China’s threats towards Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing. The US and the Philippines hold dozens of annual exercises, which have included training with the US Typhon missile system, and more recently, with the NMESIS antiship missile system, angering China.