Trump does Asean: Trump attempting the ‘Asean handshake’ with then Vietnamese prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (left) and former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte during the opening of the Asean Summit in Manila in 2017. — AP
ONE of the first things that crossed my mind as Donald Trump made a comeback as the President of the United States is that will he make his way to Malaysia next November to meet his South-East Asian counterparts at the Asean summit that will be held in Kuala Lumpur.
When he took office in the first round in 2017, Trump attended the Asean Summit when the Philippines was chair that year. He skipped the next three Asean summits and even during the Covid-19 years when summits and meetings were held online, he gave the 2020 Hanoi virtual Asean summit a skip.
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