Indeed, Southeast Asian states fear that Trump’s increasingly amenable approach to China will further embolden Beijing to militarize and dominate the South China Sea and other regional waters. As Rameen Siddiqui of Modern Diplomacy notes: All of President Trump’s “needs [from China, on Iran, tariffs, and other issues] point toward concessions [by the White House], and the concessions most available are ones that matter enormously to Southeast Asia: reduced American pressure on Chinese South China Sea behavior … and an implicit acknowledgment that Beijing has primacy in its immediate neighborhood.” Add to this the possibility, as Trump has suggested, that he will use arms sales to Taiwan, already approved by Congress, as a bargaining chip, a move no U.S. president has made before, and regional states have become further scared.