ASEAN leaders hanker for trade deal as growth sags
BANGKOK: Southeast Asian leaders met yesterday in Thailand eyeing a breakthrough in talks over the world’s largest trade deal to help throw off the torpor which has gripped the global economy since the start of the USChina tariff war. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) opened their annual summit in Bangkok hoping to secure a China-backed free trade pact knitting together half of the world’s population and around 40 percent of its commerce.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — a deal spanning India to New Zealand and wrangled over for several years-is now seen as an urgent counterpoint to US protectionism.
Washington’s trade rumble with Beijing has weighed on markets, with the IMF warning the spat could cut global growth to its lowest pace in more than a decade. Meanwhile President Donald Trump’s protectionist rhetoric has spooked some ASEAN nations who fear their economies could fall under his crosshairs. Trump has repeatedly warned of further intervention to protect American business and several Asian nations are waiting to find out if the US will put them on a watch list of “currency manipulators”.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad warned the regional bloc could hit back against any punitive trade measures, skirting over specifics. “We will do exactly what Trump does,” he told a business forum ahead of the summit opening, calling the US leader “not a very nice man”.
“If you go alone, you will be bullied. We don’t want to go into trade war but sometimes when they do things that are not nice to us, we have to be unnice to them,” he added.
Earlier his Thai counterpart, Prayut ChanO-Cha, echoed the theme of regional cooperation on the RCEP deal, while Philippines’ trade secretary Ramon Lopez said he hoped to have a “very positive report (on RCEP) come Monday” when the summit ends.
The ASEAN summit follows a push by Washington and Beijing for a partial agreement to squash some of tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of goods that have rattled both economies.
But Washington has pared back its delegation to Bangkok this year. In what is being read by some as a snub to ASEAN, the US is sending national security advisor Robert O’Brien and commerce chief Wilbur Ross. US Vice President Mike Pence attended last year’s ASEAN summit in Singapore, and President Donald Trump was at the 2017 meeting in the Philippines.
A senior White House official refuted claims of a snub to the Southeast Asian bloc. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are unavailable because they will be “very engaged in campaigning” for a string of governors’ races, the official told reporters. Trump instead trusts O’Brien “to go out and take care of big problems and small problems”, the official added. — AFP