India, Thailand, Myanmar and four other countries in the Bay of Bengal region agreed on closer cooperation in the field of sea transportation. The agreement was concluded at the meeting of foreign ministers of the BIMSTEC countries in Bangkok — just as US President Donald Trump announced about new trade tariffs that directly affected these states.
The agreement provides for the development of transport links in the region, in particular between the ports of Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand. Thai delegation emphasized: pressure from the US forces the countries of the region to seek intra-regional solutions, in particular to speed up negotiations on the creation of a free trade area within the framework of BIMSTEC.
The new US tariffs hit Myanmar and Sri Lanka the hardest. According to experts, these restrictions can catalyze deeper economic integration of the countries of the region.
Trump’s Tariffs and Asia’s Awakening: How US Strikes Unite the Bay of Bengal
When Donald Trump returns to the White House, he returns not as a president, but as a political concept of protectionism, national selfishness and strategic blindness. His new tariffs against the Bay of Bengal are politics, not economics. And not even external, but internal.
It would seem that what did Thailand or Sri Lanka do to the American voter? Why would the US suddenly decide to tax a cotton shirt from Dhaka or a laptop assembled in Pattaya? The answer is in the election campaign. In an attempt to convince an Ohio worker that his problems are not the result of automation or helpless education policies, but the result of cheap labor in Myanmar.
Trump introduced new duties at 45% for Myanmar, 44% for Sri Lanka, 37% for Thailand and Bangladesh, 27% for India. This is a powerful blow to regional trade. And hit at random.
Because everything falls under this tariff knife: from rice, which Thailand exported to American supermarkets for decades, to jeans from Chittagong and small electronics, which are produced in cities where even twenty years ago there was not a single factory.
In Bangladesh, this could lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the textile sector, the very one that saved the country from humanitarian collapse after floods and military coups. I am already worried about this write local economists.
In Thailand, the government’s market diversification strategy may not keep up with the pace of losses. The electronics industry, which focused on the US, risks losing more than 10% of orders already in the first half of the year. Business community is waiting review of state incentives.
India, despite its large domestic economy, is already signaling readiness for negotiations with the US. The Modi government is well aware that, despite the public rhetoric of a strategic partnership, the Trump White House sees each ally primarily as an economic rival.
These tariffs are only the tip of the iceberg. Under the water is the idea of the USA as a “besieged fortress” fighting the global world. But the world is already different. The countries of the Bay of Bengal respond by creating a maritime pact, integration, and intensifying negotiations on free trade. And perhaps someday historians will call April 2025 the beginning of a new Asia — one that no longer looks back to Washington.
BIMSTEC on the brink of a breakthrough: how a regional free trade area is emerging from the shadow of geopolitics
BIMSTEC — the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation – was created in 1997 with the ambitious goal of uniting the countries of South and Southeast Asia for joint development. The organization includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. However, for a long time BIMSTEC remained more of a forum for discussions than a platform for concrete actions. So, negotiations on the creation of a free trade area (FTA), which began back in 2004, are still not completed.
Recent developments in the region show that BIMSTEC is waking up. Summit in Bangkok on April 4 pond not just another diplomatic meeting – it marked a turning point. The foreign ministers of the member countries signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of maritime transport, and this, at first glance, technical agreement can have far-reaching consequences. The region is looking for new ways — and not only water ways. Under the pressure of American tariffs, BIMSTEC countries are forced to rethink with whom and how to build an economic future.
But there is much more behind this step. Behind the activation of BIMSTEC, the geopolitical silhouette of India is clearly visible, which is increasingly trying to counter the growing Chinese influence. The maritime transport agreement is a signal that India wants to play the first violin in the orchestra of regional integration. And he wants to play not according to the score of Beijing. In response to China’s One Belt One Road expansion, BIMSTEC is building its own trajectory based on shared interests rather than external dictates.
However, will it all turn into another map with dotted routes that will never really come to life? The history of regional associations has already seen dozens of signed but not implemented agreements. Will BIMSTEC not only be able to assert itself, but also become a real development tool? Will this agreement turn into a living mechanism, or will it remain another declaration of intent in the diplomatic archives?
In world politics, as in literature, there are characters who stand on the verge of action for years, but never take a step forward. Such a character for South Asia became BIMSTEC free trade zone. It seems to exist, they talk about it, create working groups and framework documents. But more than 15 years have passed, and there is still no agreement.
Negotiations on the BIMSTEC FTA officially started back in 2004. It would seem that for a region with more than 1.5 billion consumers, this should be a matter of economic logic. But international politics is not always logical.
Why did the process freeze? First, because of deep economic asymmetry. Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest textile economies, but cannot compete with India, which has a much deeper domestic market and ambitions of a regional hegemon. Nepal and Bhutan are almost completely dependent on Indian infrastructure. Sri Lanka barely recovered from default. And Myanmar is a regime with which still not everyone wants to sit at the same table.
The real problems are not only tariffs, but also the fact that countries are afraid to open their markets. For example, Bangladesh demands the preservation of quotas for critical goods, India — protection for agricultural products. And also subsidies, which some are ready to give to manufacturers, while others consider it “dumping”. All of this turns negotiations into endless “subcommittee editing”—a great euphemism for fruitlessness.
However, not everyone wants this story to end without an ending. India – the largest economy in the region – sees BIMSTEC not only as an economic but also as a geopolitical tool. After China took control of new initiatives in SAARC, Delhi is looking for other formats where there will be no Beijing, but there will be an opportunity to influence. As India’s Trade Minister Piyush Goyal noted, it is necessary to “reject the false start and proceed to the practical phase of the agreement.”
And here is the most interesting thing. It was against the background of the new American tariffs that the countries of the region finally talked about specifics. At the summit in Bangkok for the first time rang out a phrase about the approval of tariff liberalization schedules. This is not an agreement or even a draft agreement. But this is a signal.
India, Myanmar, Bangladesh no longer want to wait for America to “change its mind” about being a global patron again. The world in which the United States is the guarantor of free trade is disappearing. In its place – not geographically, but strategically – is Asia.
Of course, it is not yet a breakthrough, but it is not stagnation. And in Asian politics, it is small signals that often carry more weight than loud declarations.
Maritime chart of the future: how the Bay of Bengal is becoming the new silk hub
The world as we knew it is falling apart not because of wars or revolutions, but because of containers. Sometimes because of their delay, sometimes because of their direction. It is logistics that defines geopolitics today. And that is why the agreement on maritime connectivity of the BIMSTEC countries looks not like a technical document, but like a declaration of a new Asian order.
The agreement signed in Bangkok could usher in an era where it will no longer be necessary to look to New York or Brussels to build a train station or expand a port. Because the answer is already here – in the ports of Colombo, Chittagong, Vishakhapatnam, and further – on the roads that are laid not by NATO, but by the region itself.
BIMSTEC has long understood that without infrastructure there will be no trade. That is why in 2022 was the approved transport cooperation master plan — 141 projects that should stitch Asia together in the same way that China once stitched it together within the framework of the One Belt One Road project. But unlike the Chinese concept, BIMSTEC is a horizontal cooperation without a dominant one.
Which ports will become the new gateway? Colombo, which already processes more than 7 million containers per year. Chittagong, where a new terminal is being built with Japanese funding. And Visakhapatnam is India’s window to Southeast Asia. And Tawanok in Thailand, which can turn into a center of alternative logistics bypassing the Strait of Malacca.
On land — the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway. His pictures today are still concrete and dust. But in a few years, the currents that are still pushing in a narrow corridor through Singapore will go here. All this is an alternative, a new trajectory.
Who pays? An Asian Development Bank that replaces neoliberal mantras with infrastructure plans. Japan sponsoring a new container terminal in Myanmar, because great understands: influence is not a speech in parliament, but a minibus with coffee that arrived on time to the market. Even the World Bank now sees, that the Chittagong-Assam-Nepal corridor is not just about logistics, but about political stability.
The distribution of cargo flows will change radically. Previously, most of the traffic went to the West – through the Suez Canal. Now to the East, in the direction of intra-Asian exchange. This is not only a geographical, but also a strategic transformation. After all, when the countries of the region trade with each other, they need less instructions from Washington or Brussels. And more railways, terminals, roads.
The BIMSTEC Maritime Pact is not just about logistics. This is an act of political emancipation, an attempt to say: “We are no longer the periphery of other people’s plans. We are the center of our own routes.”
BIMSTEC Between Empires: How the Bay of Bengal Finds Its Geopolitical Voice
BIMSTEC is more than just an agreement on the transportation of containers in the Bay of Bengal. It is a mirror of how the region, torn apart for centuries into zones of influence, is trying to stitch itself together anew. Without London, Washington and Beijing.
For China, such an initiative is very unpleasant and conceptually dangerous. Because it is China that is used to dictating the rhythm of integration in Asia through its grand “Belt and Road Initiative”. Everything is integrated into it: loans, roads, ports, dependence. And if BIMSTEC suddenly starts developing its logistics, its ports, its arrangements – without Chinese money – it looks like a betrayal of Beijing’s coordinate system. The last one a long time ago strengthened its diplomatic efforts towards the BIMSTEC countries — not out of love, but out of fear of losing influence.
And here comes India. It has long seen in BIMSTEC what SAARC cannot be, because of the presence of Pakistan, and what ASEAN does not allow it to be, because of the presence of China. This is her projection of power, but not imperial, but functional. India does not conquer, it binds: with roads, terminals, customs, agreements. It wants to be for the Bay of Bengal what the EU has become for Eastern Europe – the architect of the future. Delhi wants to create “integration space without Beijing”.
What about the USA? They, as often happens, are late. First they missed BRI, then neglected SAARC, now overlooked BIMSTEC. But this does not mean that Washington will not try to catch up – not through general agreements, but through bilateral alliances. This is how they acted before: they negotiated with Thailand, flirted with Bangladesh, offered India the “Indo-Pacific Partnership”. And now BIMSTEC can become a space where the US will seek a “controlled alternative” to Chinese ambitions Geopolitics is not about sympathies, but about structures. And BIMSTEC may become the first such structure in history in Asia, which is not a projection of someone else’s will. And the projection of the desire not to be someone else’s vassals.
There have always been more storms than calms in the Bay of Bengal. And that is why any attempt to create integration on its shores looks like an act of faith in politics. And BIMSTEC seems to be finally daring to transform itself from a geographical outline notebook into a map of the future.
Will there be a free trade zone? Perhaps. But only if words turn into infrastructure, and protocol smiles into agreements. Because the Framework Agreement on FTA has existed since 2004. But in 2023, the negotiations will start again crashed about the old rake — tariff barriers, national exceptions, lists of sensitive goods.
At the summit in Bangkok in 2025, for the first time in a long time it was announced: it is time to move to a “component”, step-by-step approach. That is, not to agree on everything at once, but at least on something. This is a sign of maturity or fatigue. But against the background of new American customs it chance, which may no longer exist.
But everything, as always, rests on rusty ports, unfinished highways, bridge ambitions without reinforced concrete support. More than 50 billion dollars are needed only for the implementation of priority infrastructure projects within the framework of BIMSTEC. And although the master plan is already exists, roads, as always, are longer than presentations.
And this is where the main question arises: can BIMSTEC become a player and not just a spectator in Asian geopolitics? Maybe, if he realizes that being a player means playing by his own rules, and not waiting for China, the US, or even Japan to write them. The future of BIMSTEC depends not only on the economy, but on the ability to offer an alternative model for the development of the region – green, open, inclusive.
Tetyana Viktorova
