From China’s artificial-intelligence successes to Dubai’s immigrant-led boom and rising prospects of debt restructuring in Venezuela and Lebanon, the winning emerging-market trades of 2025 all help investors withstand President Donald Trump’s trade agenda.

Investors piled into emerging market countries' debt to the tune of $45 billion and bought up $2 billion of Chinese stocks in January, a closely followed report from the Institute of International Finance showed on Tuesday.

Since 2020, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has underperformed the MSCI Developed Market Index by a total of 45%, according to JPMorgan. Virtually all of this gap can be attributed to the outperformance of the US and the underperformance of China.

Emerging Asian markets got swept up in the global equities storm Friday, with Thai and Indonesian stocks teetering on the brink of a bear market as President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats sent risk assets reeling.

Investors are ditching risky corners of the market for areas perceived as havens, reversing recent trends.

Currency markets are increasingly dismissive of Donald Trump’s tariff threats, raising the risk of big swings if the US president follows through on his promise to hit China, Canada and Mexico with levies next week.