WASHINGTON: South Korea is considering dishing out its highest civilian honour, The Telegraph reported. Japan has a plan to park a line of oversized American pickup trucks outside the state guest house. And there is a peace / between Cambodia and Thailand to be signed.
It can mean only one thing: Donald Trump is coming to town.
The American president is about to embark on a trip through south-east Asia sending host governments into a flap as they work out innovative ways to humour their highly unpredictable guest. The stakes could not be higher. Trump’s three-nation, one-week trip includes a summit with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, where both sides will want to calm a trade and tariff war that has put the global economy on edge.
There are plenty of real sticking points along the way, said Andrew Yeo, a Korea expert at the Brookings Institution, but there are things that Trump’s hosts can control.
“The Koreans are even floating the idea of giving Trump an award, the Mugunghwa Award, which is the highest award for service, just to again boost his ego that he’s a peacemaker,” he said.
The Grand Order of Mugunghwa is the highest decoration awarded by the government of the Republic of Korea. It is reserved for presidents of South Korea and their spouses, and for foreign presidents who have made major contributions to the nation’s security and development.
Trump is expected to fly off to Asia at the end of the week.
The White House has yet to issue its official schedule, but Trump has dropped hints about where he will be. First is Malaysia, where the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit will be held, followed by Japan. Then it is South Korea, where leaders will be assembling for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, where he is expected to meet Xi.
The schedule is a headache for Trump’s hosts. Insiders say the president hates the slow grind of the summit circuit, where he has to sit through hours of meetings. (In fact, he will leave South Korea before Apec properly begins.)
Second time around, hosts have leaned into his transactional approach.
The tone was set with the first foreign trip of his second term, when he returned from the Middle East in May with hundreds of billions of dollars in investment commitments and arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Japan has learnt the lesson. The government is trying to buy 100 Ford F-150 pickup trucks for road and dam inspections after Trump complained Japan did not buy enough American cars.
Some officials worry that American vehicles are too big for local roads, so a government order can sidestep public reservations.
Ryosei Akazawa, the country’s top trade negotiator, said recently: “The F-150 is one of Trump’s favourites.”
If the trucks can be delivered in time, there is even a plan to line them up outside the Akasaka Palace state guest house, where Trump is expected to stay.
Mireya Solis, director of the Centre for Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, said it showed how Japan was intent on creating a positive atmosphere around its recent deal to invest $550bn in the US. “And if from his window he looks at American trucks lined up in the streets, he’s going to be even happier,” she said.
The first stop, Kuala Lumpur, brings an even more significant prize, with the next steps in a peace deal between Cambodia and Thailand.
Malaysia may have brokered the ceasefire, but the White House claims credit for ending five days of lethal border clashes in July. Trump says it was his trade pressure that pushed the two sides to agree.
Last week, Mohamad Hasan, Malaysia’s foreign minister, said: “During the summit, we hope to see the signing of a declaration, known as the Kuala Lumpur Accord, between these two neighbours to ensure peace and a lasting ceasefire.” Regional experts say the declaration will effectively be a rubber stamping of the existing ceasefire agreement.