Page 22 - IB December 2024

Analysis Analysis

The US Indo-Pacific Command will extend deployments across the northern Pacific and Australia.

between Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea).
President Biden has continued this work on infrastructure 4) Regional militarisation
and telecommunications, which will remain a major In line with the outgoing Democratic administration,
battleground with China in a second Trump term. Donald Trump and the Hawai’i-based US Indo-Pacific
Trump’s trade and economic agendas will seek to slow Command will continue to ramp up militarisation across the
China’s economic advance. During this year’s election Pacific Islands, especially in Guam, Hawai’i and the three
campaign, he pledged to slap tariffs on Chinese imports Micronesian Compact states.
in excess of 60% – an astounding policy that will hurt US Despite this, Trump’s transactional attitude towards
consumers and impact trading nations around the world deal-making with China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s
that rely on exports to Chinese markets. Kim Jung-Un is bad news for countries hosting US military
While most island nations have relatively limited exports, facilities. Last year, in a throwaway comment, Trump
the US-China geopolitical competition over the dollar stated that “Guam isn’t America” when he was warned
standard will also complicate economic partnerships. This that military bases in the US territory were vulnerable to
global contest comes at a worrying time, as OECD nations a North Korean missile strike. It seems Trump is happy to
redirect resources from climate action towards arms sacrifice indigenous CHamoru for the greater good (echoing
manufacture, even as island nations seek more climate past US perfidy during the 1946-58 nuclear testing program
finance and debt relief.
22 Islands Business, December 2024