The architecture of global trade is being dismantled, not by accident but by design. When U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer addressed the Council on Foreign Relations on May 26, 2026, he effectively declared that the post-1945 multilateral trading order is no longer the foundation of American trade policy. For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a bloc that has built its economic strategy around the rules-based system of the World Trade Organization, this represents an existential shift.
Greer’s message was blunt. The United States has abandoned the hope that China will fundamentally reform its state-led economic model. “China’s state-run economy is part of its political system, not just an economic system,” Greer argued, and expecting Beijing to change is unrealistic. Washington is therefore pivoting from trying to transform China to managing the effects of competition. The toolkit is familiar: tariffs, export controls, investment screening, and stringent rules of origin. But the doctrinal shift beneath these tools is what matters.
The most consequential element of Greer’s remarks was his treatment of most-favored-nation status. MFN treatment, the cornerstone of the GATT-WTO system, obligates members to extend the same trading conditions to all other members. It is the legal expression of non-discrimination, the principle that made postwar trade liberalization possible. Greer indicated that MFN will no longer anchor U.S. trade policy. It will remain a minimum floor, but actual market access will be determined through bilateral negotiations. This is not a tweak to the system. It is an abandonment of the system.
For ASEAN, the implications are immediate and deeply uncomfortable. The bloc of ten Southeast Asian economies has long positioned itself as a neutral ground for great-power competition, insisting on ASEAN “centrality” in regional arrangements. But centrality means little when trade is being managed bilaterally between Washington and Beijing, with ASEAN economies treated not as partners but as potential problems.
The specific concern from Washington’s perspective is circumvention. Greer explicitly identified Malaysia, along with Mexico and other Asian countries, as potential transshipment points for Chinese goods. Under a managed trade regime, production networks face intense scrutiny: Where does Chinese capital sit in the supply chain? What share of components originate in China? Do the final goods meet rules of origin thresholds, or are they simply passing through? ASEAN’s manufacturing hubs, many of which are deeply integrated with Chinese supply chains, suddenly appear as vectors of evasion rather than legitimate trade partners.
This is the core dilemma. ASEAN economies have prospered under the WTO system precisely because multilateral rules gave small and medium states a voice and a shield. The principle of non-discrimination meant that Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines did not need to negotiate individual deals with every major power. They could trade on terms set by a common framework. That framework is dissolving, and what replaces it is a world in which leverage determines outcomes. Small economies have little leverage.
The United States and China will manage their competition through bilateral mechanisms, and ASEAN states will be invited to fit themselves into those mechanisms as Washington and Beijing see fit. The Reciprocal Trade Agreement the U.S. is pursuing with Malaysia is not a template for multilateral liberalization. It is an instrument of bilateral management, designed to police transshipment and enforce origin requirements. The same logic applies to U.S. trade policy toward Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Can ASEAN maintain its cherished principle of centrality under these conditions? The honest answer is that centrality was always easier to assert when the great powers were operating within a shared rules-based framework. When the United States and China both accepted the WTO as the arena for trade disputes, ASEAN could credibly position itself as a neutral convenor. Today, the arena is disintegrating. The United States is unilaterally reshaping its trade relationships, and China is deepening its own managed trade networks through the Belt and Road Initiative and bilateral investment deals. ASEAN is no longer in the middle. It is on the periphery of two competing systems.
The post-WTO world that ASEAN must now navigate is one in which rules are replaced by relationships, and principles are replaced by leverage. The bloc has options. It can deepen internal integration through the ASEAN Economic Community, pursue its own bilateral deals, and attempt to coordinate a collective response to the new trade order. But none of these options recreate the certainty of the multilateral system that is being left behind.
For a region built on trade, the end of the WTO era is not an abstract debate. It is the most pressing strategic challenge ASEAN has faced since the Asian financial crisis. The question is whether the bloc can adapt to a world where the rules are written by the powerful, or whether it will be left to navigate the wreckage of a system it never controlled but always depended on.