The new President of the Philippines, by all accounts, is a tough-talking nationalist with a dubious record on human rights, an attitude about Americans, and a plan to make amazing deals with the Chinese. The analogy to Trump is obvious. How do we deal with this situation?
Roll with it. Our interests in the Philippines and the South China Sea are in peace, stability, and the freedom of navigation, not in containing Chinese expansion for its own sake. If Duterte can lower the temperature in the area by accommodating the Chinese in a way that his countrymen can tolerate, so much the better for us; we have no good reason to press an aggressively anti-Chinese agenda on anyone in this area. If not, which seems more likely, he knows where to find us.