For decades, the United States’ relationship with Cambodia has been among the most fraught across Southeast Asia, a region where the U.S.-China great power rivalry is fast intensifying. In the past, Washington and Phnom Penh have vigorously sparred over issues like democracy and human rights as well as concerns about Cambodia’s strengthening Chinese ties. Under U.S. President Donald Trump’s second administration, however, this is shifting—perhaps rapidly and much to Washington’s strategic benefit and Beijing’s strategic detriment. Indeed, recent developments with regard to Cambodia suggest that the United States may have finally found a way to play offense in China’s backyard.
While attending the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia last week, Trump signed a new agreement with Cambodia (along with Malaysia and Thailand) to secure critical minerals and gradually reduce reciprocal tariffs on select Cambodian exports to the United States. He further presided over an ASEAN ceremony to mark a ceasefire (which Trump mislabeled as a “peace deal”) between Cambodia and its neighbor, Thailand. For the phone call Trump made to both sides on July 26 to push them to deescalate their conflict, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in August, lauding Trump for his “extraordinary statesmanship” that Hun argued was “vital in preventing a great loss of lives and paved the way towards the restoration of peace.” The question of merit aside, the nomination was a smart piece of Cambodian diplomacy given Trump’s obsession with the peace prize.
For decades, the United States’ relationship with Cambodia has been among the most fraught across Southeast Asia, a region where the U.S.-China great power rivalry is fast intensifying. In the past, Washington and Phnom Penh have vigorously sparred over issues like democracy and human rights as well as concerns about Cambodia’s strengthening Chinese ties. Under U.S. President Donald Trump’s second administration, however, this is shifting—perhaps rapidly and much to Washington’s strategic benefit and Beijing’s strategic detriment. Indeed, recent developments with regard to Cambodia suggest that the United States may have finally found a way to play offense in China’s backyard.
While attending the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia last week, Trump signed a new agreement with Cambodia (along with Malaysia and Thailand) to secure critical minerals and gradually reduce reciprocal tariffs on select Cambodian exports to the United States. He further presided over an ASEAN ceremony to mark a ceasefire (which Trump mislabeled as a “peace deal”) between Cambodia and its neighbor, Thailand. For the phone call Trump made to both sides on July 26 to push them to deescalate their conflict, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in August, lauding Trump for his “extraordinary statesmanship” that Hun argued was “vital in preventing a great loss of lives and paved the way towards the restoration of peace.” The question of merit aside, the nomination was a smart piece of Cambodian diplomacy given Trump’s obsession with the peace prize.
Prior to the ASEAN summit, the Trump administration cut Cambodia’s initial 49 percent tariff rate down to 19 percent—the same as the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally. Additionally, in July, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command held a bilateral defense dialogue with the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces—the first since 2017, uncoincidentally during Trump’s first term. Over the summer, there was some chatter that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would visit Cambodia as well. Although Hegseth’s published itinerary for his current Indo-Pacific trip does not include Cambodia, he may still show up as he is already slated to stop in neighboring Vietnam.
This warming trend in U.S.-Cambodia ties is directly attributable to one thing: Trump’s authoritarian streak simply aligns better with Cambodia’s own authoritarianism. Following Vietnam’s military intervention in Cambodia in 1978 to bring down Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, Hun Manet’s father, Hun Sen, became prime minister and ruled with an iron fist for 38 years, finally ending his tenure in 2023. Hun Sen is currently a senator and remains an extraordinarily powerful figure in Cambodian politics—indeed stronger than his son, despite the latter’s office. In practice, this means that Cambodia is accustomed to strongmen and how they weaken democracy, laws, and norms—an agenda Trump has inarguably also pursued in America.
But how this translates abroad matters, too. Cambodia has welcomed Trump’s defunding of U.S.-backed programs supporting civil society and the shuttering of Voice of America, which Hun Sen praised as “a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world.” Trump’s policies stand in stark contrast to those of previous U.S. administrations. During the Biden administration, for example, then-Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Phnom Penh in 2021 to discuss Cambodia’s upcoming ASEAN chairmanship. Just prior to her arrival, an editorial in a Cambodian state-run newspaper argued that instead of haranguing Cambodia on values, the United States should “further intensify its development cooperation” and “consider encouraging its investors to invest in Cambodia” like China has done. Today, the second Trump administration is certainly behaving more like Beijing in terms of conducting foreign policy through the lens of trade, investment, and supply chains above all else, with no strings attached when it comes to values. And Trump’s strategy appears to be working. Cambodian officials are reportedly now more interested in opening their country to U.S. businesses, according to an American attorney who handles such matters. He said “the sentiment has changed almost overnight” due to Trump’s policies.
Trump’s success in Cambodia has also been propelled by deepening concerns in the country about overdependence on China, particularly Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which promotes infrastructure and other investments. Cambodia reportedly hosts as many as 100 such projects worth tens of billions of dollars. High-profile projects include the Phnom-Penh-Sihanoukville Expressway, the Siem Reap Angkor International Airport, Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone, and the Funan Techo Canal, which aims to connect the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand—a controversial project from not just an ecological but also a geostrategic perspective. Regardless, these projects have incurred heavy debts that will have to be repaid to China, contributing to Phnom Penh’s push to diversify toward the United States. After Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, for example, Hun Manet remarked that he sought to “elevate our existing good bilateral ties to greater heights”—a point he has consistently reiterated.
Despite recent U.S. inroads, China’s grip on Cambodia will remain a fact to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future. The China-Cambodia friendship truly is “ironclad” given not only their deeply enmeshed economic ties but also Phnom Penh’s past diplomatic support of Beijing’s initiatives at the United Nations and within ASEAN on sensitive issues such as control over the South China Sea. In 2012, for example, the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting did not issue a joint communique because of Chinese pressure on the chair, Cambodia, to avoid statements that contradicted Beijing’s policies on the South China Sea and other disputes. When it held the ASEAN chair again in 2022, Cambodia did allow a joint communique to be released that included some language that was unlikely to have pleased China, suggesting that it sought to break free of Chinese coercion in that moment.
But overall, Cambodia still prioritizes China over the United States. In 2020, for instance, Phnom Penh decided to demolish two U.S. Navy facilities on its Ream Naval Base to make way for Chinese-funded infrastructure. Although Cambodia strenuously denied there would be a Chinese military presence at the base, commercial satellite imagery shows a Chinese military enclave at Ream, and sources on the ground confirmed that the area is off-limits to Cambodians. This strongly suggests that Ream now hosts a Chinese naval base, Beijing’s second such overseas facility after Djibouti. Cambodia has also not authorized a U.S. Navy port call at Ream, despite having a yearslong request on the books.
Still, Trump’s strides in Cambodia within a few short months are remarkable. And it isn’t just the regime that is a fan; it seems to be the Cambodian people as well. Buddhist monks, for example, have marched through the streets with his photo, and government and business leaders have compared him to none other than God. Indeed, there is now a push to rename one of the highways in Cambodia the “Donald Trump Highway” in his honor. If it happens, it will complement the existing “Xi Jinping Boulevard,” underscoring the competitive nature of the relationship with Cambodia.
More significantly, what the United States has done of late in Cambodia has broader implications for U.S. foreign policy and grand strategy. Trump’s jettisoning of values-speak in favor of prioritizing national interest and economic transactions above all else—similar to Beijing’s own approach—could give the United States a critical edge in engaging with other countries in Southeast Asia, the broader Indo-Pacific, and much of the global south. Already, Trump has engaged other states that had tenuous ties with Washington, such as Pakistan, on critical minerals.
There are downsides to Washington’s newfound strategic advantage, of course. Trump may try to strike a critical minerals deal with Myanmar soonrunning the risk of making the civil war there worse as a result. Prioritizing national interests over values by such a wide margin will further erode what’s left of the rules-based international order in favor of great power competition.
But in the end, ensuring that Beijing’s new world order—including its domination of the Indo-Pacific and beyond—does not come to fruition requires difficult trade-offs, and this begins with greater U.S. pragmatism in places like Cambodia.
