May 6, 2025
Asia Times

Phar Kim Beng, Kuala Lumpur

Trump’s presidency behaves like a misfiring trading bot—sensitive to market fluctuations but lacking the stability or logic of any AI

There was a time when US diplomacy was conducted across mahogany tables, national security debates were articulated in full sentences and presidential decisions filtered through knowledgeable institutions.

But that era is over with the second coming of Donald J Trump, who governs not as a head of state but as a market-reactive mechanism. The US presidency has thus morphed into a volatile, screen-driven experiment in governance by impulse.

It is not policymaking; it is platform trading, with the global economy as collateral.

The algorithm is Trump—and the algorithm that is Trump is broken. For what it is worth, algorithms are supposed to be clear sets of rules designed to reach consistent outcomes. Trump, however, has internalized the form but exploded the function. 

His presidency too frequently behaves like a misfiring trading bot—sensitive to fluctuations in the Dow, Nasdaq, VIX and Treasury yields but lacking the stability or logic of an AI model.

When the Nasdaq dives, his threatened tariffs vanish. When bond yields soar, trade war threats are dialed back. A spike in the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) becomes a signal not of market instability but of foreign policy adjustment. This is not governance; it is a stochastic presidency—a jittery, jumpy reflex machine.

This new reality was starkly illustrated in the abrupt 90-day tariff reprieve Trump announced for certain Chinese tech imports. The decision wasn’t born of any high-level dialogue with Beijing or recalibrated multilateralism.

Rather, it was a Nasdaq-driven panic response to cratering confidence in US tech companies’ equity prices. Policy didn’t lead the markets; the markets led the president.

In Southeast Asia, this new algorithmic volatility has paralyzed regional planning. Ministers and technocrats in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila are still preparing responses to Trump’s announcement of “Liberation Day” tariffs as if US policy now follows a linear path. 

But Trump’s Washington no longer operates on timelines or doctrine. It moves on volatility ticks and sentiment charts. And this new disconnect is potentially deadly for the region’s trade and industry.

A Trump tariff aimed at Chinese components today may inadvertently hit Malaysian intermediate exporters tomorrow.  If those exporters pivot, they may find the tariff is gone the following month—leaving them exposed and cash-strapped.

Thai manufacturers adjusting supply chains to favor US buyers could find their incentives reversed a week later in Trump World.

Trump’s broken algorithm has thus stalled investments, collapsed planning and eroded trust. What has emerged is not creative destruction but strategic paralysis far and wide.

China is adapting to this chaotic new reality; it clearly no longer expects coherence from Washington. Instead, China is building firewalls by deepening the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), expanding bilateral yuan settlements and strengthening its tech ecosystem. Beijing is hedging not just against US sanctions but against US incoherence.

That’s because the Trump 2.0 administration isn’t a strategic actor; it’s a volatility actor. And volatility actors don’t negotiate; they react. They don’t commit; they signal.

This is not diplomacy; it’s real-time hedging. And with each erratic move, the algorithm tightens its grip. 

Without recalibrating its expectations, ASEAN members will find themselves not just reacting late but reacting wrong. Trump’s trade policy is a crude weapon without a specific target since friends and foes are lumped and lashed together. 

It has become a form of “crowbar diplomacy”—crude, reactionary and destructive. Tariffs aren’t calibrated tools; they’re tantrums. And the damage they inflict isn’t precision pain; it’s system-wide uncertainty and chaos.

Even when exemptions come, they arrive too late: the damage to trust and supply chain integrity is already done. American credibility as a trading partner has eroded, not from isolationism, but rather from unreliability.

Ironically, Trump, who railed against global financial elites, is now ruled by them. The bond market dictates his every tariff pivot. The very mechanisms he sought to disrupt are now scripting his presidency in real-time.

To anticipate the next Trump move, one must stop reading communiqués and start reading market signals. Is the 10-year Treasury yield spiking? Prepare for tariff pauses.

Is the Nasdaq climbing on chip stock rebounds? Expect China tech sanctions. Is the VIX surging? Watch for new erratic White House messaging, likely via Truth Social.

These indicators are no longer economic sidebars. They are US foreign policy. What Trump has inaugurated is not just another chaotic term – it is a new governing model, an algorithm that is wacky, impulsive and dangerously unbound by law or strategy.

It functions at the speed of sentiment, with the geopolitical fallout of a slow-moving landslide. And yet, while it lasts, it wields immense power—not through logic, but through reaction. Not via diplomacy, but via momentum.

In this new world, the most powerful memo isn’t printed on White House letterhead—it blinks across trading screens. That is the tyranny of the algorithmic presidency. It doesn’t need to think. It just needs to keep reacting while forcing the world to flinch.

The writer is a professor of ASEAN studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and a visiting faculty member at the University of Malaya.