From the violent reaction in Asian currencies to frantic media speculation about what lies ahead, it's clear Donald Trump's big win is a game-changer of epic proportions.

The plunges in Chinese stocks and the yuan alone show how investors are rapidly reordering their approaches to global financial risks and opportunities. The dollar surged on the news Trump scored a second term. US stocks jumped, as did cryptocurrency prices. Yields on US Treasury securities shot higher, too.

The "Trump trade" that Asia has in mind is to take cover. A Trump 2.0 White House will surely be more inward-looking, putting Asia's export-oriented economies in harm's way.

The blast radius is a wide one. Though aimed at China, Trump's planned 60% tariffs will upend Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and other trade-driven economies. The fallout on transshipment flows could be incalculable.

"A material increase in tariffs would represent the most significant departure in policy from the current administration and potentially the largest source of volatility," says Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, a strategist at JPMorgan. "The current macro backdrop is much different versus eight years ago, when the business cycle was in mid-cycle, labor market was less tight, inflation was not on the Fed's radar and pro-growth 1.0 policies were easier to implement and more impactful to the bottom-line."

Trump's victory over Kamala Harris is less a "black swan" event for Asia than a gray one. Unlike the former, the latter is a predictable but unlikely outcome. A "gray swan," though, can have its own severe impacts, too.

One unintended consequence might be strengthening the hand of Xi Jinping's China. By taking on Beijing so aggressively, Trump will effectively strengthen it by forcing Asia into a no-choice integration with an Asian economy — an economy with China at its center and core, not an America led by an erratic, mercantilist president blaming Asia for many of his nation's ills.

For Asia, the best-case scenario is that Trump's tariff threats are more a negotiating tactic than a fait accompli. Indeed, economists at Goldman Sachs think that Trump will only slap 20% tariffs on China — and resist the urge to impose blanket rates on others.