Hold a Quad Summit

• President Trump should hold a Quad summit during his first 100 days in office to demonstrate the administration’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific region.
• Australia, India, Japan, and the United States form a critical block to meet new economic and security challenges, and a meeting sends a strong signal to China.
• The Quad has proved a resilient formation that has grown in importance through successive administrations.
• Trump should renew his commitment to a visionary and far-sighted initiative from his first term.

President Donald Trump should hold a Quad summit during his first 100 days in office. Meeting with the leaders of Australia, India, and Japan—three powerful Indo-Pacific democracies—would demonstrate the new administration’s commitment to this vital region and to partnerships that deter Chinese aggression, strengthen the American economy by creating resilient supply chains, and preserve regional peace and order.

In the face of global uncertainty, it is critical that the Quad nations cooperate to meet new economic and security challenges and to reinforce a free and open Indo-Pacific. The second Trump administration already has signaled it will prioritize the China challenge—whether in the form of economic competition, the technology race, or military advances. Challenging China requires multiple lines of effort, including investing in U.S. defense and technology capabilities, achieving better bilateral trade terms for American consumers, restricting U.S. high technology through export controls, countering disinformation campaigns, and calling out Chinese aggression. Collaborating with like-minded nations is a vital element of what will be a multifaceted and years-long U.S. strategy.

Long History

To understand the Quad’s origins, one must go back 17 years. During the late Shinzo Abe’s first term as prime minister of Japan, he pushed to include India in the trilateral security talks the United States, Japan, and Australia held, proposing a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.¹ Abe was convinced that India, as a maritime power and democracy, had an integral role to play in shaping the “Indo-Pacific”—a phrase he coined in a speech to the Indian parliament in 2007.² The first-ever official security consultation among the four nations was held in May 2007. However, a strong negative Chinese reaction to the gathering and subsequent changes in political leadership in Australia and Japan later that same year contributed to the rapid demise of the Quad.³

Following a 10-year hiatus, the Quad was revived during the first Trump term in 2017.⁴ Though not a military pact, the Quad brought the four nations together with a shared vision of the region and a framework for applying their resources and capabilities to realize that vision.

The Biden administration built on Trump’s revived Quad initiative by establishing multiple working groups on issues like critical and emerging technologies, infrastructure, and disaster relief and holding four in-person Quad summits. The final Quad summit of the Biden administration, held in September 2024, included announcements of new maritime security initiatives, including a Quad Coast Guard observer mission.⁵ The initiatives came at a time when China had been aggressively pursuing its expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, including launching water cannons and other attacks against Philippine ships.

Future Potential

The Quad can be a powerful antidote to the increasing strategic and military cooperation among authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—cooperation aimed at overturning the current global order and international norms that largely have kept the peace in the Indo-Pacific for the past 50 years. Following the announcement of their “no-limits partnership” in 2022, China-Russia cooperation has become a prominent feature of the Indo-Pacific. In recent years, the two nations have engaged in an increasing number of joint force operations, including joint air patrols, Air Defense Identification Zone penetrations, and naval maneuvers.

Sending a signal of unity among the Quad nations during this unpredictable period in international relations would have a calming impact on the region and reassure U.S. allies and partners that Trump 2.0 will not go it alone in dealing with China. Instead, it will work within multilateral groups to challenge Chinese dominance of the region.

There are several areas in which the new Trump team could put its stamp on the Quad. Given the rising importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and the need to establish norms governing its use, the Quad could become a focal point for such international discussions. Another important area of competition with China is in critical minerals, a topic on which the Quad has started discussions but so far made little progress.

High Stakes

If the Quad dialogue lapses in the initial months of the second Trump term, it could signal to the region a lack of U.S. interest in working with allies and partners to deal with the challenges of a rising China. This could lead Australia, India, and Japan to each pursue independent policies that seek greater accommodation with China and that settle differences on China’s terms. Without a sense of unity among the key Indo-Pacific nations, China will take the opportunity to create further divisions among them, thus weakening all four nations’ leverage with Beijing and undermining the concept of a free and open Indo-Pacific.

President Biden held a virtual Quad summit within his first 100 days of taking power and an in-person Quad leaders meeting just nine months into his first year in office.⁶ If Trump holds a Quad summit early in 2025, he will demonstrate his appreciation for working with allies and partners to meet challenges from China—which only have intensified in the past four years. He would also demonstrate an early commitment to building on one of the most visionary and far-sighted initiatives of his first term.