The victor, the vanquished, and the middle power strategist are among the top guns visiting Manila for the 49th Leaders’ Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which the Philippine government is hosting next week from November 15 to 18. Check the list of rescheduled and canceled flights affected by the event.
And here’s a bonus: Angelina Jolie is speaking at the 2026 ASEAN Inclusive Growth Summit in Manila on Wednesday, November 11. Read more.
The ASEAN Summit and Related Summits could not have come at a more unique moment for the world.
- A bruising midterm elections defeat for US President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he inspired has left countries he has punished with tariffs and wars wondering what he would do next. (For starters, he named the hardliner Stephen Miller his new chief of staff.) Trump will be attending the ASEAN Summit, nearly a decade after he first visited the Philippines during his first presidential term for the 31st ASEAN Summit in 2017, which Manila also hosted.
- Brazil President Lula da Silva, fresh from an astounding reelection to a fourth term that stemmed the march of the far right in Latin America, will also be attending the summit upon the invitation of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — his first visit to Manila as both countries commemorate 80 years of diplomatic ties. Lula defeated Trump’s right-wing ally Flavio Bolsonaro, who fled to the US on claims he was cheated.
- Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose Davos speech taking potshots at Trump earned him a standing ovation, is also joining the summit. He had said that the rules-based global order was over and that middle powers must come together, a view echoed by Marcos in 2024 at the Shangri-La Dialogue. Marites Vitug writes how Canada, slapped with heavy tariffs by the US, is finally out of America’s shadow.
China naturally weighs heavily in these meetings, given the elusive Code of Conduct for the South China Sea which ASEAN has been negotiating with Beijing for over two decades now. At the ASEAN Summit last year, then-foreign secretary Enrique Manalo said it was time for the talks to progress and tackle the thorny issues that had been avoided for years. But there’s little doubt that the negotiations will continue to drag.
- The Code remains to be ASEAN’s North Star, however. Chinese Premier Li Qiang will be participating in the summit. Ahead of the event, Philippine Foreign Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro said she had a “frank, pragmatic, and constructive” phone call with her counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, to discuss “the state of bilateral ties at length.”
- In July, both countries held their first foreign minister-level meeting in two years, where Lazaro raised a long list of Manila’s grievances and concerns against Beijing.
- The heightened tensions were put in the spotlight in last month’s ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting that was chaired by Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., and which Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun skipped.
- US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also held an informal meeting with the defense chiefs, where he called for “strong, self-reliant” nations in the region. With the Republicans’ defeat and the unpopularity of the Iran war among Americans, the fate of Hegseth is now up in the air.
And how about the rumored signing of the US-backed Pax Silica zone during the summit? No such thing, said the US ambassador to Manila in a statement.
Another major event is happening within the vicinity of the Philippine International Convention Center, where the leaders’ summit and related summits will be held: the resumption of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. It’s the defense panel’s turn to present their evidence.
- Who are the initial witnesses for the Vice President? Read here.
- Duterte’s lawyers initially wanted to present former law dean Ralph Sarmiento as one of their first witnesses, but he declined. Read more about it here.
- Dwight de Leon shows us the list of evidence against Duterte that was submitted by the prosecution to the Senate impeachment court.
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