Leaders expected to hold talks on bilateral trade days before US tariffs on Philippine goods set to take effect.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr will meet United States President Donald Trump this week, hoping Manila’s status as a key Asian ally will secure a more favourable trade deal.
Marcos will be the first Southeast Asian leader to meet Trump during the US leader’s second term.
Trump has already struck trade deals with two of Manila’s regional partners, Vietnam and Indonesia, driving tough bargains in negotiations even with close allies that Washington wants to keep onside in its strategic rivalry with China.
“I expect our discussions to focus on security and defence, of course, but also on trade,” Marcos said in a speech before leaving Manila and arriving in Washington on Sunday, with hopes to reach a deal before August 1, when Trump says he will impose 20 percent tariffs on goods from the Philippines.
“We will see how much progress we can make when it comes to the negotiations with the United States concerning the changes that we would like to institute to alleviate the effects of a very severe tariff schedule on the Philippines,” Marcos said.
The US had a deficit of nearly $5bn with the Philippines last year on bilateral goods trade of $23.5bn.
Trump this month raised the threatened “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from the Philippines to 20 percent from 17 percent threatened in April.
Although US allies in Asia such as Japan and South Korea have yet to strike trade deals with Trump, Gregory Poling, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Marcos might be able to do better than Vietnam, with its agreement of a 20 percent baseline tariff on its goods, and Indonesia at 19 percent.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement of a deal with the Philippines at a lower rate than those two,” Poling told the Reuters news agency.
Marcos visited the Pentagon on Monday morning for talks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and will see Secretary of State Marco Rubio later in the day, before meeting Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
He will also meet US business leaders investing in the Philippines.
Philippine officials say Marcos’s focus will be on economic cooperation and Manila’s concerns about Trump’s tariffs.
They say he will stress that Manila must become economically stronger if it is to serve as a truly robust US partner in the Asia Pacific.
Philippine Assistant Foreign Secretary Raquel Solano said last week that trade officials have been working with US counterparts seeking to seal a “mutually acceptable and mutually beneficial” deal for both countries.
China tensions
Trump and Marcos will also discuss defence and security, and Solano said the Philippine president would be looking to further strengthen the longstanding defence alliance.
Philippine media quoted Manila’s ambassador to Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, as saying on Sunday that the visit would see a reaffirmation of the seven-decade-old mutual defence treaty and “discussions on how we can continue to cooperate with the United States, our major ally”.
With the Philippines facing intense pressure from China in the contested South China Sea, Marcos has pivoted closer to the US, expanding access to Philippine military bases amid China’s threats towards Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing.
The US and the Philippines hold dozens of annual exercises, which have included training with the US Typhon missile system, and more recently, with the NMESIS antiship missile system, angering China.
Manila and the US have closely aligned their views on China, Poling said, and it was notable that Rubio and Hegseth made sure their Philippine counterparts were the first Southeast Asian officials they met.
Poling said Trump also seemed to have a certain warmth towards Marcos, based on their phone call after Trump’s re-election.
