Malaysia says have invited Trump to attend ASEAN and East Asia summits in October | Forexlive
It’s a dicey situation for countries in Asia, specifically South East Asia, as they are also balancing out their respective ties between the US and China. Trump had previously said that he will punish countries aligning with BRICS with additional 10% tariffs. However, it’s not clear which countries those will be.
For some context, Indonesia is a member of the bloc but the likes of Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam have participated as partner countries.
As much as the invite above is one that could help smoothen ties between ASEAN and the US, this would probably be too small an occasion for Trump to be bothered with to attend. And that instead allows for Beijing to continue to grow their engagement with the countries involved. China’s own foreign minister Wang Yi is in Malaysia today to participate in ministerial talks among ASEAN members.
As for Rubio’s visit today, he spoke with Malaysia prime minister Anwar and said that he will take into consideration the discussion of tariffs in relaying the message back to Trump. Malaysia was hit with 25% tariffs in Trump’s latest letter, up from 24% in April, and officials here said they themselves don’t know what went into the change in calculation.
Malaysia had roughly $43.7 billion in exports to the US in 2024. It’s not a massive amount on its own but a notable one, with that being a little more than half of what India does with the US.
As an aside, Rubio was also here to hold talks with Russia’s Lavrov on the situation with Ukraine.
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