Bangkok, May 31 (EFE).— Southeast Asia doesn’t believe in imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on the United States and will rather favor talks to ease trade tensions with the US, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Saturday.
Malaysia currently holds the presidency of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“In ASEAN, we have a consensus that no decision or recommendation should be made to the detriment of another member,” Anwar said during a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s premier defense forum.
“The best option is to continue communicating,” said Anwar, noting that Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Vietnam, and Cambodia, some of the hardest hit by the now-suspended US “reciprocal tariffs,” have engaged in bilateral negotiations with Washington since April.
He also pointed out that the region, penalized mainly for serving as a transshipment point for Chinese goods, partly due to the relocation of Chinese factories to Southeast Asia during the first tariff standoff under Donald Trump’s presidency (2017–2021), “agrees to a multilateral system.”
“We do not any unilateral action that goes against the principle of free trade,” he added.
Southeast Asia, a major exporting region that relies heavily on the US market, has reportedly made purchase offers to Washington during tariff talks, including in the energy and defense sectors, areas currently dominated by Russian suppliers.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who also attended the Shangri-La Dialogue, declined to address the tariff dispute during his speech.
Hegseth is a close ally of President Donald Trump, who announced Friday that tariffs on steel and aluminum would double from 25 percent to 50 percent starting June 4.
Trump’s announcement came just one day after a Court of Appeals lifted a block imposed by the International Trade Court on much of his istration’s tariff policy affecting imports from numerous countries.
That ruling would not have affected steel tariffs, but it did apply to the “reciprocal” tariffs announced on April 2. EFE
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