Miti wants Malaysia out of US ‘trade cheats’ list

Officials from international trade and industry ministry looking forward to talks between minister Mustapa Mohamed and US counterparts to help resolve issue.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia is hoping to get off a “trade cheats” list as declared by the United States government in March, say international trade and industry ministry (Miti) officials.

Aside from Prime Minister Najib Razak’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, there will be talks between Miti Minister Mustapa Mohamed, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in Washington this week, The Star reported.

Miti officials said two key points of discussion will focus on the “trade cheats” list and efforts to kick-start talks on a new bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with the US.

Last March, two months into the Trump administration, the US decided to come down hard on countries which it says had caused the world superpower to have a trade deficit of almost US$50 billion (RM209 billion).

Malaysia was among the countries named as a “trade cheat” by the US, however Miti officials say that Malaysia’s contribution to the US trade deficit in goods last year was only 3.37%.

“The US has said that Malaysia is one of those countries that has trade surplus with it and from their point of view, that is a ‘trade cheat’.

“If everybody is going to have a trade surplus, then who is going to have a trade deficit?” a Miti official was quoted as saying by the daily.

He added that Miti would be using Najib’s official visit to the US to explain the trade data discrepancy. Miti statistics have previously shown that Malaysia had recorded a trade surplus with the US since 1990.

From January to July this year, data from Miti shows that trade between the two countries continued to grow at a healthy pace, increasing to RM93.77 billion. Compared with the corresponding period last year, it is an increase of 20.3%.

Acccording to Miti, exports grew by 11.1% while imports went up by 33.1% during the first seven months year-on-year.

Meanwhile, on the issue of the bilateral FTA, Najib had announced last week that the two countries may look into forging a bilateral trade arrangement following the end of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump had declared the US was pulling out of the trade pact in January.

“There is a possibility for us to look into a bilateral trade arrangement. The present administration (of the United States) prefers a bilateral trade arrangement, as opposed to a multilateral one,” Najib had reportedly said.

It would not be the first time that discussions had taken place on a bilateral FTA.

According to The Star, both countries started negotiations for a bilateral FTA in 2006 which were halted in 2008 following Malaysia’s decision to join the TPP negotiations. -FMT