Us Tariffs Include Islands With Only Penguins Says Anwar

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Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Putrajaya has chosen to take a moderate approach as there is room for discussions and negotiations.
PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim today criticised the method used by the US administration to determine its “reciprocal” tariffs, describing it as flawed and pointing to its inclusion of small islands “inhabited only by penguins”.
In his speech at the meeting of the Prime Minister’s Department’s staff in Putrajaya, he said the tariffs announced by the US last week were based on “very weak grounds”.
“It is quite unusual for a country that previously supported the spirit of free trade and established the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to now take a different approach.
“This is what I mean by post-normal times: when political and economic policies are implemented unexpectedly, including tariff announcements based on very weak grounds,” he was quoted as saying by Bernama.
Anwar also said that Putrajaya had chosen to take a moderate approach, as there was room for discussions and negotiations.
“Myself, the foreign affairs ministry, and the relevant ministers will contact our friends in Asean so that each country can state its position. At the same time, we move together as a group,” he said.
Adding that Asean should not take the matter lightly, he urged its members to stand together as a region with a “population of 640 million and an economic strength that is among the top in the world”.
He said he had met with Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto and Vietnamese prime minister Pham Minh Chinh, and contacted the leaders of the Philippines, Brunei, Laos, and Thailand to discuss the issue.
“We want Asean as a group to present a unified stance, demonstrating agreement and building a stronger foundation for upcoming negotiations,” he said.
On April 2, US president Donald Trump announced a series of new tariffs that directly increased import duties on several of Washington’s Southeast Asian trading partners.
The hardest hit were Cambodia with a basic tariff of 49%, followed by Laos (48%), Vietnam (46%), and Myanmar (44%).
Thailand faces a tariff of 36%, Indonesia 32%, Brunei and Malaysia 24% each, the Philippines 17%, and Singapore 10%. - FMT

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