Much ado about the 31st ASEAN SummitThe highlight for this week was the conclusion of the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Meetings which began last week.

“I’ve had the honour of sharing our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Trump told delegates at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Vietnam earlier this month.The term, “Indo-Pacific” has been used repeatedly during Trump’s Asian jaunt in reference to the region running from Eastern Africa to the Pacific Ocean.

China will send a special envoy to North Korea this week, state media said Wednesday, after US President Donald Trump concluded an Asian tour to rally support against Pyongyang's nuclear threats.Friday's trip by President Xi Jinping's special envoy, Song Tao, is likely a diplomatic push by China to resolve the nuclear standoff, though the official Xinhua news agency merely said he will discuss last month's Chinese Communist Party congress.As Beijing prepared for the missio

US Presidents in the past have never been accorded the extent of Trump’s red-carpet treatment that he received when he arrived at China as part of his tour of Asia.

Donald Trump on Monday lauded his trade achievements during a five-nation tour of Asia, promising he would reveal "far bigger" steps when he returned to Washington.The US president has frequently bemoaned what he calls "unfair" international trade deals and a perceived lack of respect for America and its leaders.But standing alongside the prime ministers of Japan and Australia in Manila on Monday, he said that was all changing."The way they've treated us, the res

Donald Trump shook hands Monday with a smiling Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a man who boasts about personally killing people and who is waging a drug war that rights groups say involves mass murder.The US leader is in Manila with leaders of 18 other nations for two days of summits, the final leg of a headline-grabbing Asian tour dominated by the North Korean nuclear crisis.Allegations of Russian meddling in last year's US presidential elections have also hounded the second half

US President Donald Trump arrived in Vietnam Friday where he is expected to flesh out his "America First" vision for the future of world commerce, fresh from a visit to fellow superpower China which is pitching itself as the new architect of global free trade.Trump, who tweeted his arrival shortly after stepping off Air Force One at Danang airport, is likely to press his protectionist doctrine when he addresses CEOs ahead of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum at the

On the first anniversary of Donald Trump's election win, markets in Asia are behaving like the U.S. president's rhetoric is just background noise.At first, there were knee-jerk reactions. Japan's Topix Index slumped 4.6 percent on November 9 as investors digested the news while credit-default swaps protecting Indonesian government debt against default rose 26 basis points that week, the most since March 2016.The perception then was that Trump couldn't be good for Asia.

US President Donald Trump was forced to abandon a surprise visit to the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas on Wednesday due to bad weather, leaving him "pretty frustrated" according to the White House.South Korean leader Moon Jae-In, who had flown earlier before the weather closed in, was left waiting at the border which bristles with electric fences, minefields and anti-tank barriers.The US chief executive, who the White House had previously said would not go to the sym

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have one thing in common – they both want to make their nations great again.