Reports began surfacing last week that US President Donald Trump, while preserving his ambitious inaugural five-country trip to Asia next month, would cut short his trip and miss out on some mulled engagements including the annual East Asia Summit in the Philippines. Trump will lose a valuable chance to personally show up and advocate for the kind of more action-oriented EAS that Washington has been pushing for over the past few years, writes Prashanth Parameswaran for the Diplomat. Not attending the East Asia Summit would leave the field free for the Chinese to drive the consensus on issues important to US interests, and to achieve a public relations coup at America’s expense, according to Walter Lohman. Meanwhile, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Sunday he would deal with Trump “in the most righteous way.”