By: Ammar Nainar
The Quad foreign ministers — from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — will convene this week in Washington D.C. for their second in-person meeting this year — and their second since Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president. Despite trade and tariff wars and continuing security tensions in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, Quad cooperation continues. But the trends this year also reflect a new and more focused agenda for Quad cooperation in the second Trump administration, including maritime, economic, and technology security, as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). Despite a new set of frictions between Washington and its three Quad partners, the four countries’ broad security outlooks also suggest continued, if more focused, cooperation.
Over the past several months, to little notice, the Quad has been continuing to cooperate in a variety of ways. The four countries’ activities include a joint sail by the four countries’ Coast Guards to Guam, a simulation to leverage each other’s logistics for humanitarian assistance, the sale of sensors to India for the Quad’s maritime initiatives, a workshop on pandemic preparedness, and coordinating humanitarian assistance with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the earthquake in Myanmar. The Quad was also highlighted in the United States’ joint statements with India and Japan in February 2025. These statements mentioned priorities such as delivering infrastructure investments, deploying telecommunication networks, and conducting joint maritime patrols in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Quad countries now appear to be streamlining their agenda for the first time since the group’s revival in 2017. The Quad met in 2019 and 2020 at the foreign ministers’ level and, since 2021, at the leaders’ level as well. Over time, about 12 working groups were established in areas such as climate, critical and emerging technologies, cybersecurity, health, infrastructure, space, HADR, counterterrorism, maritime security, policy-planning, disinformation, and higher education (STEM fellowships). Security consultations, intelligence exchanges, and military exercises (including a regular naval exercise, Malabar) were also held.
Overall, some working groups produced more tangible outcomes than others. On maritime security, the Quad countries shared commercial satellite data with regional partners to help them monitor their exclusive economic zones and track unidentified shipping. The Quad Investors Network enabled an Indian company to invest in a battery materials plant in North Carolina. Joint principles were also finalized for software security, critical and emerging technology, and digital public infrastructure. By the 2024 leaders’ summit, the joint statement criticized China’s military maneuvers in the South China Sea and expressed common perspectives on North Korea, Myanmar, and the Middle East. Unlike some other multilateral initiatives, the Quad appeared appealing to a second Trump administration given its emphasis on burden sharing, skepticism of multilateral bureaucracies, and priorities on defense cooperation to deter Chinese aggression.
Yet, the past six months also witnessed tensions in the United States’ bilateral relations with Australia, India, and Japan, all of which could complicate future Quad cooperation. Trump’s claims of mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan was rejected by the Indian government. The Trump administration also launched a review of the Australia-United States-United Kingdom military agreement (AUKUS), which risks Australian plans to purchase American submarines. In addition, senior Pentagon officials asked Japan to increase its defense spending, which was repudiated by Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru.
These developments, although important, are unlikely to derail the Quad given the four countries’ similar — although not congruent — outlooks towards cooperation. At the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth decried China’s objectives to dominate Asia while reinforcing the Quad and its benefits for military interoperability. Likewise, Australia’s intelligence chief Andrew Shearer mentioned that as China becomes more assertive, the Quad needs to “do harder forms of balancing… and that means more military interoperability.” Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya in his speech to the Diet underscored that they could secure the Indo-Pacific region through “expand[ing] practical cooperation including among Japan-Australia-India-U.S. [countries].” And similarly, Indian leaders often tout the Quad’s importance for Indo-Pacific security. These national outlooks — possibly coupled with a more focused agenda of technology, maritime, and economic security, and HADR — should not be overlooked by commentators and observers as they assess the future of Quad cooperation.
Ammar Nainar is a Program Coordinator and Junior Fellow for the Foreign Policy & Security program at ORF America.