Tariffs, war and broken trust: Southeast Asia’s Trump problem

The goodbye emails started arriving on a Monday. By Friday, Sheila’s inbox told the story of an organisation coming apart at the seams, one farewell at a time.Sheila* had spent nearly a decade helping run US-funded development projects in the Philippines. She had watched them grow, hire staff and take root in local communities.When Washington ordered a freeze on foreign aid in January 2025, she told herself it was just a pause – a bureaucratic blip pending a review by the new administration.Then US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a Stop-work directive and her inbox began to fill.“Every day, you’d receive goodbye emails from people across the organisation,” Sheila said. “When we asked about our employment status and our boss had no answer, that didn’t sound good.”The lay-offs began in March. By May, most of her colleagues were gone. Sheila was kept on longest, tasked with the bleak work of winding down the very programmes she had helped build.By the time it was over, the message from Washington was clear, she said, and it was a message that travelled far beyond her office.