The progressive umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) denounced Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for expanding the scope and scale of Balikatan exercises, which started on April 20, amid the ongoing U.S.’ acts of aggression in West Asia and the economic and energy crisis it has caused. The group said the joint military exercise reflect the expanding intervention of the US military and the subservient foreign policy of the Marcos administration.

Balikatan 2026, the 41st in the annual bilateral exercise between the Philippines and the US is their largest joint military exercise. House Assistant Minority Leader and Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Sarah Elago slammed the Marcos Jr administration: “The Marcos Jr. administration is acting as if the United States is not waging wars and escalating military tensions abroad. Pushing through with the largest Balikatan yet, with over 17,000 troops, only deepens the Philippines’ alignment with these conflicts and places our people on the frontlines”.

BAYAN continued, “It is costly, disruptive to local communities, and endangers the local population by recklessly allowing foreign troops to use our land and water territories as war playground… We should not allow war criminals and our former colonizers to preposition their war materiel and conduct drills in various parts of the country to train their troops and test their weapons. The Philippines should not be made into a training and staging ground of the US to attack other nations.”

Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena declared that “The Marcos regime’s allowing the presence of Japanese soldiers in the war games Salaknib and Balikatan is an outright betrayal of the country’s history and sovereignty. Their participation in war maneuvers at the ‘invitation’ of the puppet state is a slap in the face of the millions of Filipinos who were killed, tortured, oppressed, and exploited under the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945”.

Additionally, the Human rights group KARAPATAN deplored the planned construction of a munitions factory in Subic and Bataan in the Philippines that will load, assemble and package 30-millimeter cannon rounds for the US military and its allied countries. Through its Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience involving 16 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the US plans to outsource the manufacture of solid rocket motors (used to power guided missiles) as well as drones and ammunition for use in its wars of aggression.

The construction of a US munitions factory in the Philippines makes the Marcos Jr. regime complicit in the Trump regime’s criminal attacks against states that have shown independence against imperialist impositions. It will also make the country a target of retaliatory or preemptive strikes by the US’ enemies, and irresponsibly drag the Filipino people into a conflict not of their own making.

Worse, the munitions to be manufactured in the Philippines will likely be used also against Filipinos in the Marcos Jr. regime’s brutal counter-insurgency war.

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) criticized the Philippine government’s commitment to “Pax Silica,” a multinational initiative spearheaded by the US International Trade Administration designed to secure supply chains for critical minerals, advanced electronics and strategic technologies.

The protest centers on a proposed 1,619-hectare economic security zone within the Luzon Economic Corridor, which the KMP claims will prioritize foreign industrial needs over local food security and environmental safety. KMP views the project as a move that “integrates the country into supply chains led by the United States” at the expense of local autonomy.