POLITICAL observers warn that US President Donald Trump’s massive crackdown on immigrants could affect Filipinos staying illegally in the United States, but the Philippines’s relationship with the superpower is likely to remain steady under his administration.
World leaders are gearing up for Trump’s return to the White House: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is crafting appeals to align with Trump’s transactional approach to gain support for his war-torn country, while outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has dispatched envoys to ease US-Canada trade tensions amid Trump’s tariff threats.
Despite these global challenges, analysts interviewed by the Varsitarian believe the US-Philippines strategic partnership will continue.
“Wala akong nakikitang malaking shift o adjustment sa ating policy, except that we should brace for the domestic policies of Trump that may affect us,” Manuel Mogato, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and UST journalism faculty member, said.
Trump has vowed to impose tariffs to reduce a trade deficit with Canada and Mexico and raise revenues, and deport as many as 20 million undocumented immigrants.
A few days after the elections, Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the US, reminded undocumented Filipinos living there to seek legal citizenship and “not wait to be deported.”
While there are over 300,000 undocumented Filipinos in the US, analysts believe deporting all of them won’t significantly affect remittances sent to the Philippines.
“We have more Filipinos in other parts of the world than in the United States,” Francis Esteban, associate dean of the Institute of Arts and Sciences at the Far Eastern University said. “Second is that — huwag naman sana — if ever such deportation would happen, I believe that these people would still find their way to work again abroad.”
Trump’s mass deportation plans are easier said than done, said Mogato, who had served as president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines and is a former correspondent of the Reuters news agency.
“Kasi maraming trabaho sa Amerika, ang gumagawa, mga illegal immigrant, kasi ayaw ng Americans ‘yong mga menial job, ‘yong mga dirty work,” he said.
Bilateral ties under Marcos
Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, said in May 2023 that he “can’t think of any better partner to have than” President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Marcos has expressed optimism that the bond between the two countries would remain despite the change in leadership in Washington.
“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,” Marcos told reporters in November after a conversation with Trump.
Marcos has rekindled the country’s ties with the US after his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, pivoted toward China. As a result, the US reaffirmed its support for the Philippines in countering China’s aggressive behavior in the West Philippine Sea.
Four additional bases for American forces were opened under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). The Philippines also joined the US and Japan in a trilateral summit to advance “maritime security, economic security, and technology cooperation.”
Assoc. Prof. Francis Rico Domingo, a faculty member at the University of the Philippines Department of Political Science, said both countries benefit from the alliance.
“Strategic ang Filipinas sa kanila, so they (US) need to invest in the Philippines,” he said. “Strategic din para sa atin ang Mutual Defense Treaty. We need it while we’re building an actual military force.”
Critics of the new EDCA sites, including the president’s sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, fear that the bases could become a “key stockpile of weapons for Taiwan” if tensions between the US and China escalate.
Taiwan is enmeshed in the proxy war between Beijing and Washington, with the former intent on seizing the semi-autonomous island to reunify with mainland China and the latter sending over $8 billion in military aid to ramp up its defense forces.
A conflict in Taiwan, about 500 kilometers from the Babuyan Islands, could affect the Philippines and trigger the Mutual Defense Treaty, signed in 1951, which directs Washington to protect Manila in the event of an “external armed attack,” and vice versa.
“Si President-elect Trump is a business person,” Domingo said, “so, ‘pag nakikita niya walang return of investment dito sa Filipinas, doon (lang) siya magbabago ng trajectory.”
“Pero kapag may return of investment, for example, strategic ‘yong location natin, meron tayong EDCA sites, so bakit niya babaguhin ‘yon? So, it’s more of continuity.”
Trump and China
Trump, who took office for the second time on Jan. 20 (Jan. 21 in Philippine time), inherited a government openly hostile to China. Under Biden, the US cultivated alliances to counter Beijing’s growing influence.
This focus on China is one reason Trump will likely maintain Washington’s ties in Asia, including with the Philippines, despite his “America First” approach, said Esteban.
“We have to understand that he’s very cautious about China’s economic influences,” he said. “So that would mean, of course, looking at partners or allies that would be on the same page as the US in terms of its economic interests.”
“We saw how the Bongbong Marcos presidency is also aligned toward the West in stark contrast to that of the previous administration.”
Trump has nominated cabinet secretaries openly hostile to China, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, his pick for secretary of state.
In his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 16, Rubio warned China to “stop messing around” with the Philippines and Taiwan and avoid “rash or irrational” actions that could escalate tensions.
“The actions they are taking now are deeply destabilizing,” he said. “They are forcing us to take counteractions because we have commitments to the Philippines and we have commitments to Taiwan that we intend to keep.”
“If God forbid, there is some miscommunication or some inadvertent conflict emerges there and we have obligations to them, the impact that it will have on the entire globe is enormous, and that includes Europe,” Rubio said.
Mogato, who writes about US-Philippines relations in his columns for news and fact-checking website PressOne.PH, predicts Washington will “step up” its presence in Asia under Trump.
“China is different,” he said. “Under Trump or Biden, the US considers China a strategic rival, a competitor. So, they would not reduce or minimize their presence and activities in the Pacific region but they might step up.”
Peso
The peso could sink to P60 per dollar due to Trump’s economic policies, including tariffs of up to 20% on all goods entering the US
“If the newly elected president opts for very aggressive protectionism policies that take markets by surprise, the dollar could reach another all-time high,” according to a Jan. 13 report by the research firm BMI Country Risk & Industry Research.
A weaker peso could mean higher costs for imported goods, economist JC Punongbayan wrote for Rappler.
“If we let the peso slide further, imported goods will be a lot more expensive, and that can stoke domestic inflation – something that the BSP is finding difficult to tame further because rice (over which it has no control) has been contributing a lot to food inflation, and in turn, overall inflation,” the article, originally published in May 2024 but was updated in November that year, read.
Trump, accused of inciting an “insurrection” in 2021 after refusing to concede the presidential election to Biden, and was convicted in New York in 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying business records, defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5.
Harris had stepped in for Biden, 82, who was urged to withdraw by leaders of his own Democratic Party after a disastrous debate performance. Trump won 312 Electoral College votes and more than 77 million in the popular vote despite being outspent by Harris.
The Republican bet’s victory made him the 45th and 47th US president, the first chief executive in over a century to serve nonconsecutive terms, following Grover Cleveland (1885–1889, 1893–1897).
The Trump inauguration had to be moved indoors at the rotunda of the US capitol amid record-setting cold temperatures, a first since the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1985. The cold-war era president counted Marcos Jr.’s father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., as a key ally against communism.
Trump on Jan. 20 invoked the memory of US President William McKinley, who annexed the Philippines in 1898 and set the course of a historical and unequal relationship between the two countries.
