Asia & The Midterms
3 November 2026
Americans vote this week in midterm elections that will not change who sits in the Oval Office. They will, however, shape how freely Donald Trump can pursue his trade, technology and Taiwan policies over the next two years. Graeme Acton reports.
Forecasters and media pundits broadly favour Democrats to win the House, while control of the Senate is also in play. For Asian capitals, the more useful question is not who wins, but what a changed Congress can actually do.
The tariff regime Asian exporters face has already been rebuilt once this year. After the US Supreme Court ruled in February that emergency powers could not justify the "liberation day" levies, the Trump administration moved to a temporary global tariff, then announced duties of 10 to 12.5 per cent on some 60 trading partners under Section 301, which requires no vote in Congress.
Some House Democratic leaders say they will try to overturn the tariffs. Analysts at BowerGroupAsia caution that Trump's veto and executive powers will limit what any Congress can undo. The more realistic prize, according to Stephen Olson of Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, will be the political carve-outs: a Democratic Congress sensitive to voter anger over prices could push for exemptions that give Southeast Asian exporters modest relief. Deeper change, he argues, will have to wait til the presidential race in 2028. Cost of living tops US voters' concerns, and a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 17 per cent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of prices.
China: a hawkish consensus, but an uncertain follow-through
Congress is unlikely to alter US-China relations. Democrats and Republicans largely agree on countering Chinese advances in artificial intelligence and shielding American industry from Chinese competition. The Chip Security Act, which would tighten export controls on advanced semiconductors, has drawn bipartisan support in Washington.
But legislation still has to clear Trump's desk. He welcomed Xi Jinping to the White House in September, and is expected to meet him twice more this year, in Shenzhen (at APEC) and in Miami. Trump has overruled his own China hawks before, most notably by allowing Nvidia to sell some advanced chips to China. The date that matters more may be next January, when the US-China trade truce expires. Beijing is likely to read the midterms as a sign of Washington's electoral volatility rather than a shift in policy.
Taiwan is the sharper test. A Congress in the hands of the democrats could push Trump to move ahead with a stalled US$14 billion arms package. He approved an US$11 billion sale last year but has described the larger deal as a "very good negotiating chip" with Beijing.
Tech: the data-centre backlash
An unexpected cross-party revolt against data centres, driven by fears of higher electricity bills, matters to the Asian companies involved in America's AI investment boom. Slower permitting or limits on large projects would dent their growth prospects.
The race to watch is Ohio, which Trump carried with 55 per cent of the vote in 2024. Democrat Sherrod Brown has put opposition to data centres at the heart of his challenge to Republican Senator Jon Husted, and leads in most polling averages by low single digits.
Democrats are also expected to scrutinise alleged conflicts of interest in critical minerals deals struck to build supply chains outside China, and the trade agreements negotiated after the tariff shock. Both parties favour moving production out of China, which many observers expect to keep benefiting Vietnam and Malaysia. Neither is likely to ease scrutiny of Chinese content and transshipment through those same markets.
The Asian American vote
About 16 million Asian Americans are eligible to vote. In the AAPI Data survey, nearly nine in ten cite the economy as important, 59 per cent calling it extremely so, ahead of healthcare (49 per cent) and Social Security and Medicare (45 per cent). Intent to vote is high: 96 per cent of Japanese Americans, 92 per cent of Indian Americans and 86 per cent of Korean and Vietnamese Americans. Yet roughly a third say neither major party has contacted them.
Immigration weighs heavily. Arrests of Asians by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have risen more than 400 per cent since Trump returned to office, with Indians and Chinese accounting for 29 and 25 per cent. Some 64 per cent of Asian Americans say the country was once a good place for immigrants but no longer is. For Asian students and workers weighing their options, that shift in sentiment is unlikely to be altered by one election.
What to watch
The results will not settle Asia's biggest questions, but they will offer signals. Watch whether a Democratic House moves on tariffs and the Taiwan arms package, whether Brown's data-centre politics travels beyond Ohio, and what Washington and Beijing agree before the truce lapses in January. For most of Asia, the main effect of these midterms will be to shift the balance of pressure on a president who still holds most of the cards on US trade and foreign policy.
Asia Media Centre