Why the Philippines must stand its ground against a friend like Trump

“He is friends with my mother. He knew my mother very well. He asked about her. ‘How is Imelda?” I told him that she also sends her greetings,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said when asked about his congratulatory phone call with US president-elect Donald Trump. The Filipino leader was referring to his mother, former first lady Imelda Marcos, who was a fixture in New York society and a close friend of Trump’s in the late 20th century.

The Marcoses even owned a Trump building in Manhattan, which was among their many overseas properties funded by billions of dollars in allegedly ill-gotten wealth. “I expressed to him our continuing desire to strengthen that relationship between our two countries, which is a relationship that is as deep as can possibly be – because it has been for a very long time,” the younger Marcos added.

He made it clear that he did not raise anything sticky or sensitive during his brief exchange with Trump. Neither did he display any anxiety or misgiving about the return of the notoriously unpredictable and transactional US leader. If anything, the Philippine political establishment seems broadly optimistic about the direction of bilateral relations, which enjoy strong bipartisan support in Washington.

The appointment of China hawks to Trump’s cabinet has elated Filipino officials, who hope for expanded defence cooperation amid rising tensions in the South China Sea. Upon closer examination, however, it’s clear the second Trump administration could be a mixed blessing at best. The Philippines could ultimately get pressured to make hard choices amid intensified great power rivalry in Asia.

To be sure, Trump is very popular both among Filipino elites as well as the broader masses. During his first term, he enjoyed favourable ratings among nearly eight out of 10 Filipinos in a Pew Research Centre survey of dozens of nations.

But Trump also won over Filipino elites by more directly taking on China. For decades, US presidents (most notably, Barack Obama) have equivocated on the precise parameters of the Philippine-US mutual defence treaty in light of rising tensions in the South China Sea.