Here is a brief of a comment by P Gunasegaran in Malaysiakini.
- COMMENT | Malaysia’s shameless succumbing to US President Donald Trump’s unwarranted pressure over tariffs involves more than lopsided trade conditions.
- It is also a servile surrender of sovereign rights, and that comes with other restrictions too.
- Although called a reciprocal arrangement, it is badly one-sided - a long list of Malaysian “shoulds” in return for what appears to be a unilateral imposition by the US of a 19 percent tariff without any relent.
- In addition, Malaysia makes a slew of concessions, including an ironclad agreement to purchase hundreds of billions of ringgit of US goods through its multinational corporations.
- The only obligation that the US seems to have is to reduce the duty on applicable goods to 19 percent from 24 percent in April, both of which were unilaterally imposed by the US, eschewing the aegis of any recognised international trade regulation body.
My Comments: My views are slightly different and very brief. Notice that the Americans did not ask Malaysia to "open up access to Malaysia's market for free trade". They did not ask for the lifting of the many, many, many tariff and non tariff barriers which Malaysia has long imposed as part of the New Economic Policy aka the bumiputra policy.
They did not ask for equal access to the tightly government-bumiputra-political patronage controlled : banking and finance sector, the high tariffs on imported American cars (and other imported cars), the many gomen granted monopolies in the country (which affects free trade with the US as well) and of course access to gomen projects and contracts.
Absolutely not touched at all.
Obviously Donald Trump has been very well briefed on the Malaysian political patronage system, especially the bumiputra political patronage system. The glue that keeps the entire gravy train functioning.
Basically the entire political patronage system remains intact. Donald Trump immediately saw how to cut a deal. 'Ok you can keep your monopolies, your gomen projects, gomen contracts and your cash cows. But in return this is what you must do for me. Now please sign on the dotted line. And you can keep the pen.."
Israeli media reports that President Donald Trump has also coopted Malaysia into the Gaza peace process. You can fast forward to minute 9:10 of this video here: https://youtu.be/6fYy6wfX3eQ?si=uVu3wBOpwFXUsN7K
I was really hoping that at last we in Malaysia could buy American cars at much cheaper prices. That is not going to happen. The high import tariffs, the APs, etc all remain in place. The few will keep getting rich. We the ordinary people will keep paying.
