By The Diplomat | Created at 2026-08-14 19:25:45 | Updated at 2026-08-14 21:41:25
15 hours ago
The Thai government has denied reports that it plans to use military and security cooperation as leverage in its ongoing trade negotiations with the United States, reaffirming its commitment to the nations’ longstanding security relationship.
Rachada Dhanadirek, a spokesperson for the government, said on Wednesday that the talks would focus solely on how to attain fair and balanced trade between the two allies, Thai PBS reported.
Her comments came a day after a Bloomberg report stating that Thailand was preparing to warn the Trump administration that steep U.S. tariffs could force it to scale back military cooperation. This included the annual Cobra Gold joint exercises, a cornerstone of the U.S.-Thai alliance that have taken place since 1982.
The report quoted an unnamed Thai official familiar with the matter, who said this position was expected to form part of Thailand’s negotiating position in the reciprocal trade negotiations that are set to resume later this month.
“While the provision will be broadly worded,” the article stated, “Thailand could reconsider its participation in joint military activities if higher tariffs inflict significant economic damage.”
Rachada said yesterday that security cooperation would be quarantined from ongoing U.S. tariff negotiations and would not be used as leverage in the talks. She also said that existing military exchanges will proceed as planned, including Cobra Gold, the last iteration of which in February and March involved about 8,000 personnel from 30 countries.
“Thailand and the United States share broad and deep ties across many areas, including the economy, trade, security and people-to-people relations,” Rachada told the press. “Each area has its own framework and national interests that must be carefully considered. The government will not trade one national interest for another.”
Thailand has been negotiating a “reciprocal” trade deal with the U.S. since President Donald Trump’s initial “liberation day” tariff announcement in April 2025, when it was hit with a 36 percent tariff.
In October, the U.S. and Thailand announced a “framework” for an agreement on reciprocal trade, which reduced the tariff to a 19 percent tariff in exchange for a Thai pledge to “eliminate tariff barriers on approximately 99 percent of goods, covering a full range of U.S. industrial and food and agricultural products.” Under the framework, Thailand also promised to purchase more American energy, agricultural products, and aircraft in order to close its $71.9 billion goods trade surplus with the U.S.
However, the negotiation of a final agreement has been complicated and delayed by the seemingly constant shifts in U.S. tariff policy. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “liberation day” tariff regime, prompting Trump to impose a temporary 10 percent global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act, which expired in July.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has since used Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, a provision that addresses unfair trading practices, as a way to reimpose the tariffs.
Thailand is among the 44 economies that the USTR threatened in June with a 12.5 percent tariff after concluding that they had taken insufficient steps to stop forced labor under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974. It is also among 16 countries that the USTR has investigated for excess industrial capacity. The USTR has accused Thailand of “structural overcapacity” in three sectors: automotive and parts, machinery, and rubber products. If
In addition to the existing unresolved issues, these Section 301 investigations have introduced additional issues of contention into the negotiations. The U.S. government has accused Thailand of an alleged failure to legislate against imports of goods made with forced labor and
Thailand has challenged both of these determinations, while offering to eliminate tariffs and adopt U.S. standards for imports of beef, lamb, and alcoholic beverages. Its negotiators have also pledged to introduce new legislation banning imports of goods made with forced labor.
As the Bloomberg report noted, Thailand is betting that its status as a U.S. treaty ally will guarantee it a slightly better deal than other Southeast Asian nations, such as Cambodia, Malaysia, and Indonesia, that have already established trade deals with the Trump administration. Commerce Minister Suphajee Suthumpun told The Nation last month that Thailand believed that it “has grounds to be treated on more favorable terms given the depth of the bilateral relationship,” in the newspaper’s paraphrase.
However, explicitly linking tariff talks to the security relationship, if indeed Thailand planned to do so, would have been a risky and provocative move given the volatile temper of the Trump White House and the uncertain state of the U.S.-Thai relationship. Since the end of the Cold War, the alliance has entered a state of drift, at the same time that Thailand has established increasingly close political, economic, and security ties to China – ties that have come under closer attention in Washington over the past decade.
Were Bangkok to genuinely use the security relationship as leverage in trade talks with the Trump administration, one observer posted on X yesterday, it would confirm “that the alliance is dead and buried.”
