We investigate the Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) response to global dust emissions in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models, which is the first CMIP to include an experiment with a doubling of global dust emissions relative to their preindustrial levels. Dust emissions cause a strong atmospheric heating over Asia that leads to a pronounced hemispheric energy imbalance. This results in a surface cooling over Asia, an enhanced Indian Sumer Monsoon, and a southward shift of the Western Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) that are consistent across models. However, the East Asian Summer Monsoon response shows large uncertainties across models, arising from the diversity in models’ simulated dust emissions, and in the dynamical response to these changes. Our results demonstrate the central role of dust absorption in influencing the ASM, and the importance of accurate dust simulations for constraining the ASM and the ITCZ in climate models.