Singapore is Not Buying into Trump 2.0

While most of Southeast Asia appears to be warming to the return of Donald Trump to the White House, Singapore appears to be an outlier, according to the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s State of Southeast Asia 2025 Survey (SSEA 2025). One of the US’ closest partners in the region since the end of World War II, Singapore – as represented by the SSEA 2025’s respondents – exhibited a clear decline in their trust in and optimism toward Washington’s role in Southeast Asia under Trump’s second administration.

The SSEA 2025 survey was conducted between 3 January and 15 February, straddling President Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2025. The largest share of Singapore’s respondents was from academia and think tanks (28.9 per cent), followed by the government (26.4 per cent); the private sector (24.8 per cent); civil society, NGOs or media (12.4 per cent); and regional or international organisations (7.4 per cent).

For Singapore, a country that balances economic pragmatism with a firm commitment to an international rules-based order, the US is more than just an economic partner. For decades, the US has been a cornerstone of regional stability and a close partner upholding trade openness and international law. Given Singapore’s close defence and economic ties with the US, it is particularly attuned to shifts in American foreign policy. The US considers Singapore an indispensable partner even though it is not a treaty ally. It is no surprise that the SSEA 2025 results show how “Trump 2.0” has sparked significant unease and rattled confidence in Singapore’s respondents.

These data points reflect Singaporeans’ profound anxieties about the future of a global order that has benefitted smaller, more vulnerable states for only as long as larger powers abide by international law.

A whopping 70.2 per cent of Singaporean respondents cited “new US leadership” as their top geopolitical concern, making it their foremost preoccupation and significantly exceeding the regional average. In fact, Singapore was the most pessimistic country surveyed, when respondents were asked about the future of US engagement in Southeast Asia under Trump 2.0: over half (50.4 per cent) of the respondents expected it to decrease (Figures Q9 and Q36). The majority who hold this view (53.3 per cent) point to Trump’s unpredictability as their key source of concern.

This growing scepticism among Singapore’s respondents marks a sharp contrast to the broader regional trend and signals deeper anxieties about uncertainties, unilateralism and the erosion of principled US leadership under Trump. The implication is that even if the US remains strategically important to Singapore, Singaporeans may no longer consider the US to be as reliable or consistent as in the past.

Nowhere is this clearer than the shift in the Singaporean respondents’ perception of US leadership in global governance. Confidence that the US will “do the right thing” to contribute to global peace, security, prosperity and governance fell sharply from 38.1 per cent in 2024 to just 24 per cent this year (Table 1). Conversely, among those who distrust the US, the largest group (48.2 per cent, or 55 respondents) cited Washington’s distraction with domestic affairs. This view makes sense, given Trump’s “America First” agenda and his administration’s tendency to deprioritise global responsibilities.

Table 1. How confident are you that the US will “do the right thing” to contribute to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance?

This erosion of confidence is reflected across multiple indicators (Tables 2 and 3). First, confidence in the US as a leader in maintaining the rules-based order and international law plunged from 34.1 per cent to 20.2 per cent. In addition, the percentage of Singaporean respondents who view the US as a champion of global free trade fell from 21.6 per cent to 13.2 per cent. These results signal deep disappointment with the US’ turn away from multilateralism — once a defining feature of its Asia policy — and concern about Trump’s record of withdrawing from global multilateral agreements such as the Paris Agreement and undermining international institutions.

These worries are compounded by new developments that directly impact Singapore, including the US’ recent probes into the export of Nvidia chips from Singapore to China, which the US alleges aids the development of Chinese AI models in violation of US export controls. Such developments have cast a spotlight on the fragility of Singapore’s economic and technological ties to China and the US. While Singapore remains a vital US economic partner, these incidents raise the possibility of the city-state being caught in the crossfire of escalating US-China geo-technological tensions and threatening Singapore’s role as a pivotal node in regional and global supply chains.

The above might explain why Singaporean respondents’ choice of the US as the “most influential” economic power in Southeast Asia (Table 4) dropped from 20.5 per cent in 2024 to 16.1 per cent in 2025, a notable decline given that the regional average rose slightly by 1.1 per cent. Anxiety about the US’ economic influence (Table 5) has increased among Singaporean respondents, rising from 32.1 per cent to 41.0 per cent, reinforcing a sense of growing unease about America’s economic policies:

Singaporean respondents’ concerns extended beyond economic and bilateral ties to the regional order. When asked how ASEAN should respond to South China Sea tensions, 81 per cent said that ASEAN should take a principled stand that upholds international law, including respecting the 2016 arbitral ruling in favour of the Philippines. This is a higher percentage than even the Philippine respondents (80.1 per cent) displayed.

When asked “What can the US do to improve relations with your country?”, 60 per cent of Singaporean respondents — the region’s highest — believed the US should respect international law and not undermine global institutions if it wanted to improve bilateral relations. These findings reflect Singapore’s longstanding foreign policy ethos that strength must be accompanied by principle and that great powers should be held accountable against international rules.  

One of the more striking findings is that 44.8 per cent of Singaporean respondents — again the highest in the region — identified “US interference in my country’s domestic affairs” as a potential factor that could worsen their perception of the US. This reflects long-standing sensitivities in Singapore toward foreign influence, particularly when it threatens to undermine social cohesion or domestic stability. The city-state has taken steps to guard against such risks, most notably through enacting the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act.

These data points reflect Singaporeans’ profound anxieties about the future of a global order that has benefitted smaller, more vulnerable states for only as long as larger powers abide by international law. More than most other ASEAN countries, Singapore, a strategic yet small state, values a world governed by rules, not whims. Unless the US under Trump 2.0 can reassure its partners that it remains committed to multilateralism, respects international law, and demonstrates consistency, it may find even its closest friends hedging their bets.

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