Malaysia will appoint a deputy secretary-general from the Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry (MITI) to lead negotiations in upcoming discussions with the United States, said Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz.
When asked on Tuesday (April 29) about who would serve as the country’s chief negotiator, Tengku Zafrul said the role would be filled by either Mastura Ahmad Mustafa (Trade), Datuk Hanafi Sakri (Industry) or Datuk Bahria Mohd Tamil (Investment and Management).
Commenting on recent engagements with US counterparts, Zafrul said discussions with American officials, including Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and the United States Trade Representative (USTR), had gone smoothly.
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When asked on Tuesday (April 29) about who would serve as the country’s chief negotiator, Tengku Zafrul said the role would be filled by either Mastura Ahmad Mustafa (Trade), Datuk Hanafi Sakri (Industry) or Datuk Bahria Mohd Tamil (Investment and Management).
Commenting on recent engagements with US counterparts, Zafrul said discussions with American officials, including Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and the United States Trade Representative (USTR), had gone smoothly.
Read more at https://tinyurl.com/mpmpvjn9
WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news
SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar
LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline
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02:32So on the concession, again, you know, we are not talking about details yet.
02:38We have to negotiate.
02:39We talk about broad parameters first.
02:41The first is whether they want to engage us.
02:44The good news is they do.
02:46And during the meetings with the USTR and the Secretary of Commerce, both are in agreement
02:51that we should take this a step further based on the parameters that I mentioned.
02:55One is on the tariff itself.
02:57Because the whole objective for us is to reduce the tariff, right?
03:02Impossible to zero.
03:03Yeah.
03:04But obviously we need to find a win-win for both.
03:07And secondly is on the non-tariff barriers.
03:10So on the non-tariff barriers, we also discuss, we'll say that look, we will look at what
03:15are fair to put under consideration to reduce some of the non-tariff barriers, especially
03:22on agriculture.
03:23The third one is on the issue about trade imbalance, right?
03:29The whole idea is the trade imbalance in lebihan dagangan, because we have a trade surplus.
03:35Based on their figures, our trade surplus is around 25 billion US.
03:39So they want to see how can we reduce it.
03:42The good news is the last four years we have reduced it by nearly half, right?
03:47From 40 plus billion now to 25.
03:49So we are moving in the right direction.
03:51I think the expectation is how do we reduce it further, but not immediately, right?
03:55So it is good.
03:56And finally, I mentioned just now about economic security.
03:59They are very worried that if the technology that is being developed here or being manufactured
04:06here falls into hands that are not palatable to the US, right?
04:15So this again, we need to see how we can look at enforcement.
04:19So one of the ideas that we have put across is on the technology safeguard agreement, for example.
04:27So again, the devil is in the details.
04:30So the good thing is, the next step now is to get cabinet to agree that we should go full ahead on the negotiations.
04:39They have agreed to start negotiation with us.
04:42And I have also verbally said that we should be able to start negotiations soon.
04:49And they have asked us to appoint our chief negotiator for this.
04:53From MITI, of course, leading it.
04:56We have one of our senior civil servants to lead the chief negotiation,
05:01one of the more experienced chief negotiators.
05:03And on their side, they also name who one of the assistant USTR will be leading it.
05:12We'll talk about this again.
05:14Okay.
05:30We saw the technical.
05:31We should try there.
05:33The whole thing about electronics shops coming up at the stopped shop for 한다 and not built
05:37their passion.